These Are All Things You Don't Understand
by Novocain
Summary: Prostitution and assassination and the way of the shinobi are for Kakashi, and firsts and lasts and middles will never involve those nimble hands or chapped lips stretching in a bright, happy smile against his hip. There is no other choice, Sandaime says.
1. Chapter 1

_Warning: The following fanfiction contains very extreme darkness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological twistedness. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please, click the back button._

**These Are All Things You Don't Understand**

**Chapter One**

* * *

The first time Kakashi fucks, it is in preparation for a mission. There are no sweet words or heavy sighs - not even any moans or grunts or sweaty foreheads meeting when a kiss is broken.

There are no kisses.

He is eleven years old, and both of their masks stay on. He isn't meant to enjoy it. He is going undercover as a prostitute, and prostitutes only need to be very skilled at giving others pleasure.

But this is acceptable because Kakashi has never really had pleasure. He is - content when a kunai whistles through the air and hits a target dead on, right through the heart, and if he was a poetic boy, he would think it symbolic. (But he isn't and he doesn't - he simply sees it as a job done. He is good at doing his job). He likes to rile Obito up and watch the boy explode. It makes him want to smile, but he doesn't because trust is a foreign word to him (he couldn't trust his own father to do the right thing for him - live for him, not die for him) and he doesn't even trust his mask to hide him.

Emotions are a weakness, after all, and he tries to tell himself that the way his sensei grins at him doesn't make his stomach warm and his chest ache. Emotions are a weakness, and Kakashi isn't weak. He can't afford to be; he has a job to do. He has a village to live for, and he will only die when the village needs him to - when he can do no more, when there are no more enemies for him to kill or missions that he is perfect for.

Like this one.

There is no other choice, Sandaime says. There is no other boy (only eleven years old - sharp and deadly and beautiful and tie-less and willing to do anything the Hokage orders. No father to clench his jaw and have quiet words with Sarutobi and no mother to cry hysterically into her pillow but only when she thinks Kakashi isn't awake - because she knew what she was signing on for when she raised her child as a shinobi - she _knew_, and she still did it and _why _- ) who has the necessary skills.

The Sandaime says, "Konoha calls on you to complete this vital mission, shinobi," and he doesn't look up from his documents. Kakashi listens to the skritch-scratch of a pen moving automatically across paper and is not tense. He is placid and cool, and he doesn't wonder where his sensei and his teammates are because they would be here if the Hokage deemed it necessary.

He is used to working solo anyway - he was only assigned to an actual permanent team last year.

The Sandaime says, "Read the file." It is abrupt and Sarutobi's voice is somewhat ragged, but he smokes his pipe a lot and that is to be expected.

Kakashi reads it and does not flinch. Words like "infiltrate" and "masquerade" and "A-rank" and "eliminate" and "requires willing participation" march across the mission scroll, and the Hokage's breathing seems uneven.

The pen continues to move mindlessly across treaties and laws and bureaucratic minutia. Kakashi rolls the scroll up precisely.

"Accepted, Hokage-sama."

And now a choking catch in Sarutobi's breath: "Kakashi, you don't have to!" It is let out in a rush - it is a break from the dignity of his office, a descent into emotion. (Emotion is a weakness.) He takes a deep inhalation and says more evenly, "You can say no, you know." And the older man's gaze, locked on Kakashi, is asking for him to do so. The pen has stopped its noise, and the office is silent in the echo of numb creations.

Kakashi does not know how to refuse his village - or that it is even an option - and he doesn't know how to reassure burdened men or how to blunt the razor that is his blank stare running fine, thin lines down Sarutobi's ribcage in a vivisection. He knows that he is a shinobi, and he knows that his sensei's grins are not for him.

Most of all, he knows - with every drop of his blood - that he is what Konoha wants him to be, and if Konoha wants him to be a whore, then he will become one.

Sarutobi seem to be waiting for him to say something, but Kakashi doesn't know what the man wants him to say (he doesn't know a lot of things, for a genius) and so says the only thing he can. He repeats, "Accepted, Hokage-sama."

The old man slumps only a little, and if Kakashi was not who he is, he wouldn't even notice. This is when Sarutobi says: "There is no other choice." They are quiet words murmured in the the manner of a mantra, and Kakashi knows he is not meant to hear. Louder, now, and intended for Kakashi's ears, the Sandaime says in a tight voice, "You will need to train for this. Report to ANBU headquarters and ask for the Cat."

As Kakashi turns to leave, his sharp gaze misses the way Sarutobi closes his eyes and brushes withered fingers against deep crows feet.

He misses out on a lot of things - sacrifices a lot of things for stupid reasons that he believes in. He misses out on a lot of things and doesn't even realize it (and this is not true; some section of his too-intelligent brain does realize it. Kakashi secretly _wants _in a way he and everyone else thinks Hatake Kakashi to be incapable of. He wants that bright smile to be just for him and for nimble hands to run down his spine - he wants firsts and lasts and middles and those blue eyes that understand entirely too much. He wants too much and knows he will not have it because IT IS NOT FOR HIM. _He _is not for him. Prostitution and missions and assassination and the way of the shinobi is for him, and firsts and lasts and middles will never involve those nimble hands or chapped lips stretching in a bright, self-satisfied smile against his hip bone.)

But a cause is all a person needs as long as they believe in it, and Kakashi believes in Konoha in a very blind, deep, dumb way. He believes in his blue-eyed sensei, and this belief is neither blind nor dumb, only deeply rooted in Kakashi's being even to the places that he does not know exist.

It is his belief in the Yellow Flash (nothing more than belief - emotion is a weakness, and it is only belief and knowledge of the things that break a man) that makes Kakashi pause as he reaches the heavy doors. He does not turn, and his voice is quiet and calm. "Hokage-sama."

"Yes, Kakashi-kun?" The man's voice carries a faint trace of hope, but hope is one of those foreign things his team is trying to teach him and Kakashi cannot place it.

"May I ask a favor, Hokage-sama?" Respectful. Monotone.

"Anything." Guilt is one of those things Kakashi knows intimately. (Sakumo. Sakumo Sakumo Sakumo. Father. Traitor.)

"Sensei is not to know."

There is a pained silence, a whispered "As you say", and the swish of a door as it closes behind the boy (ninja, only eleven years old - sharp and deadly and beautiful and tie-less and willing to do anything the Hokage orders. No father to clench his jaw and have quiet words with Sarutobi and no mother to cry hysterically into her pillow but only when she thinks Kakashi isn't awake - because she knew what she was signing on for when she raised her child as a shinobi - she _knew_, and she still did it and _why _- ).

Firsts and lasts and middles will never involve those nimble hands or chapped lips stretched in a bright, self-satisfied smile against his hip bone.

* * *

The first time Kakashi fucks, it is in preparation for a mission. There are no sweet words or heavy sighs - not even any moans or grunts or sweaty foreheads meeting when a kiss is broken.

There are no kisses.

He is eleven years old, and both of their masks stay on, and he doesn't even know the man's name beyond his designation of "Cat". He isn't meant to enjoy it. He is going undercover as a prostitute, and prostitutes only need to be very skilled at giving others pleasure. He doesn't enjoy it, but the Cat trains him to respond to certain touches with specific expressions and sounds. They know the target, Ikari Waya, likes young boys, but none of the boys have ever lived past Ikari's interest in them, and intelligence is uncertain as to whether Ikari likes to force his lovers or see the parody of lust in children. (And Kakashi calculates that he has a twenty-nine percent chance of coming back alive. He has one-fifth of a percent chance of coming back unharmed.) Kakashi learns a lot.

He learns that cloth isn't the only thing that can hide a face, which is necessary because he will have to forgo it for this mission. So his mask comes off after the first round, and he learns how to slide expressions over his face like water in a seemingly natural way. The Cat laughs when Kakashi masters the half-scared, half-intrigued expression of a certain type of virgin, and it is a hoarse, once-full sound that would make a lot of ninja flinch.

As the week wears on, Kakashi continues to meet the Cat after training with his team. Sensei hasn't noticed anything is wrong, but that is simply due to Kakashi's innate character and the war with Iwa - and Sensei and the war is what Kakashi is doing this for, so he doesn't mind.

On the sixth day, he whimpers so perfectly (with his cheeks flushed and his silver hair clinging to his forehead in wisps and his neck bared as he rides the Cat) that the ANBU actually grunts, clenches his previously guiding fingers around Kakashi's hips hard enough to bruise, and buries himself in Kakashi's pale, gleaming body.

The Cat leaps out of the bed when he comes, pulling up his pants jerkily. (Kakashi is the only one who is naked - it teaches ease with vulnerability, the Cat says.) He mutters, "I'm finished," as he leaves the room, but it is not the end because Kakashi still has one last lesson to learn. He kneels in ready-stance on the bed, still naked, and waits for someone to dismiss him, but no one does. Fifty-three minutes later, the man returns. From his trace body language, he is angry and reluctant and has orders to follow that he resents. Kakashi wants to tell him that emotion is a weakness, but he stays silent and impassive.

"You are not to fight beyond the capabilities of your chuunin self. I'll give you that much slack this one time," the man grits out.

Kakashi is quiet - calm - as always. "...I am a chuunin."

From the ANBU's tensing frame, Kakashi knows that his trainer was unaware of this. The Cat's control slips in entirety. (And Kakashi thinks to himself that this man must be a rookie.) "Fuck. Are you telling me they're sending a _chuunin_ on this kind of mission?"

Kakashi believes this to be a hypothetical question, but the Cat evidently wants him to say something. So he does, and it is oddly honest for once. He is genuinely curious. "Why do you care? You didn't before."

The ANBU twitches once and takes in a sharp breath to speak before lapsing into silence. It is a few minutes later when he finally does speak, and his voice is glacier-cold and his demeanor that of a wall. Kakashi approves. "Realistic skill level, shinobi?"

"Jounin, Cat-sama."

"Advanced to Chuunin at what age?"

"Six, Cat-sama."

"...You are not to fight beyond the capabilities of your four-year old self. Clear?"

"Yes, Cat-sama."

Blink: and the Cat is on him and in him and beating him and tying him up, and it would be rape but for all that Kakashi has given his consent beforehand.

Kakashi knows that Sensei would kill the Cat anyway, and he is glad he does not know the man's name (even though he knows the ANBU's scent and the sound of his voice - even though that has been all Kakashi has needed to track someone for the past three years). He will be able to recognize the Cat on the street from a mile away and always avoid him, and he will do this because he respects his fellow ninja enough not to attach a face to that mask.

He knows better than anyone how necessary masks are.

* * *

Kakashi is unconscious by the end of it, and he wakes up to a medic-nin healing him. He thinks the medic is a woman, but her shape is androgynous and she wears an ANBU mask. He realizes he is still in ANBU HQ, and he tries to swallow the taste of blood away. It doesn't really work, but he didn't expect it to. The medic continues healing him, not looking up from his rope-torn wrists as she speaks.

"I have been ordered to inform you that your efforts are not good enough. You did not hold up the illusion of masochism - anyone can scream in terror and as such does not need practice. Your mission will be delayed until you have mastered this. It is now 0300 hours - you meet with your team in five hours. Get some sleep."

He tries again to swallow the taste of blood away and tells himself that the thick feeling in his gut is hemorrhaging.

* * *

He manages to stay conscious through the next session. He blocks out the pain (like his entire life has trained him to do - he is who his village and his father want/ed him to be) and moans and arches in faux-pleasure instead of pain with a wanton smile on his naked, bleeding face.

It is such a _wrong _expression for an eleven year old to have.

(When his facial muscles were finally taught to smile innocently at the beginning of this training, he couldn't stop the cynical thought of 'Sensei and the others would be so disappointed.' Because Rin and Obito and the Yellow Flash have been trying for so long to make him smile - to help him be normal, and it is another first that has been given to the village. Firsts and lasts and middles...)

The Cat fucks him five times, and Kakashi is raw and mangled and still smiling at the end of it. After, when lying in pain and nuzzling as instructed against his trainer's rigid body - silently begging for more pain: PLEASE, SIR, DO ME ONE MORE TIME - he thinks detachedly that the Cat is funneling his anger toward his superiors into this act just to be able to get through it.

Again it runs through Kakashi's mind that the man must be a relative rookie.

The Cat isn't the kind of person who would enjoy this, which isn't to say that he doesn't do a thorough job. When ten minutes of Kakashi's cuddles and caresses (with broken fingers and torn wrists, but he must love the pain) pass, he snaps out, "Fine. You're ready." The man shoves Kakashi away from him immediately and swings his legs off the bed. "Meet with your team as usual and inform them that you have been contracted in an assassination uniquely suited to your family techniques." He is silent for a moment before burying his hands in his dark brown hair and whispering, "Kid, I want to ask you to forgive me for what I've done, but I have no right."

Kakashi sits up stiffly, dizzily, and stares at the ninja's taut back with blurry vision. "Cat-sama, there is nothing to forgive."

There is a loud crack - and the Cat is gone. Kakashi looks at the hole in the concrete wall and doesn't understand.

* * *

The meeting with his team goes surprisingly well. Kakashi shows up at 0755, as usual, but does not participate in his usual staring contest with the sky. He simply stands at attention, waiting. Obito is running late, like always, and for some mysterious reason Kakashi feels something that he thinks is relief. He is puzzled but does not allow it to show. Sensei notices, turning towards him with concerned blue eyes and a small, incongruous frown.

"Kakashi-kun?"

Kakashi hadn't planned on telling anyone except Sensei that he is being sent on an assassination mission, but orders are orders and at least they won't know what he will do in order to complete it.

"Sensei," he acknowledges. Then: "Wait."

The man's eyes are questioning, but he knows his student well and simply returns to chatting with Rin.

It is forty minutes later when Obito shows up, breathless and red-faced. "Ah, I'm sorry I'm late! There was an old lady who needed help getting her groceries home, but she kept forgetting where she lived!"

Rin rolls her eyes, but Kakashi simply clears his throat slightly. When the Yellow Flash looks at him, he says, "I have been ordered to inform you that I am being sent on an assassination mission."

Rin's gasp is nearly drowned out by Obito's sudden onset of spluttering. The blond jounin's eyes narrow as he asks flatly, "For how long, Kakashi-kun?"

Kakashi does some quick math and decides the truth (_a week. A month. Three months. Forever_) would be too suspicious. "Unknown, Sensei."

"Why you?" The line of his teacher's mouth is furious and hard and sharp. Kakashi has known for years why enemy nin fear the man - has known since - (Never mind. Later. This will come later, maybe. But here: Minato does not know what Kakashi saw all those years ago - does not even know that Kakashi has seen anything.)

"The mission is uniquely suited for my family techniques."

Obito finally manages to speak, jumping in with a: "What! Why don't they send me?! I'm WAY better than you!"

Kakashi simultaneously suppresses a flinch and swats down a strange urge to vomit_._ He instead stares at the Uchiha impassively, knowing that Obito is reading '...you are such a loser' in his stony appraisal. The boy glares in return.

"...I did not ask."

Rin chooses to speak up and dissolve the tension. "Well, he'll be fine if the mission center thinks he can do it."

Kakashi very purposefully doesn't correct her - the Hokage himself gave him the mission, and Kakashi suspects that the Sandaime fully expects him to come back beaten to a pulp - if at all.

Obito takes Rin's words and puts his own spin on them, as usual. "You're right! They probably thought it would be too easy for me."

The urge to vomit is stronger this time, but he beats it back. He tunes Obito out and looks at the Yellow Flash instead. The man has been too quiet. His eyes are resigned and tired now, but his mouth has barely softened.

"Kakashi-kun, let me talk to you for a moment. Obito-kun, Rin-chan, go ahead and start running. Five laps around Konoha, twenty if you stop for a break." He ignores the pair's protests and curious eyes as he grins and sing-songs, "Get sprinting or I may be forced to pull out Those Pictures and post them all over the village..."

Kakashi notices that their teacher speaks with a false sense of mischief, but the other two don't, and they start running so quickly that it looks like they have used Sensei's signature technique. When they are no longer in sight, the Yellow Flash turns to him with a strangely inscrutable expression that looks out of place on his normally mobile face. Kakashi decides that he prefers it when his sensei acts like an idiot.

There is silence for a few minutes, and now: "...When do you leave?"

"Tomorrow."

"Do you expect any problems?"

Kakashi feels phantom pain all over his body - feels the new, whisper-faint scars on his wrists burning - and replies without hesitation: "No, Sensei."

The man sighs and puts his hand on Kakashi's shoulder. Kakashi resists the newly ingrained reflex to shy away that is at odds with his old suppressed desire to lean into the man's touch; if he is tense, well, he has always been antisocial.

"Just - Kakashi-kun, you know I hate this. You're - you're too young!" As if that would save him - as if that would save any of them. "You shouldn't be given an assassination. Even with the war, those are for ANBU." The blond's customary smile is vacationing in Iwa, and his voice and eyes are pleading and worried. Like the Sandaime's.

Kakashi stiffens and twists his shoulder out of the man's grasp. His gaze is cold and flinty. "I will be fine." _I am not so weak_ goes unspoken, but the unspoken is always more important with him - his silences say so much, are what matter, and the Yellow Flash watches him walk away with a damnably hurt and _worried _expression. (There are perhaps two others who would see what Kakashi reads so easily in his teacher's blank body language.) Kakashi ignores this; he is not coldly furious because he isn't used to being underestimated. He was a chuunin at six, after all, and that came with a few disbelieving looks and patronizing words at first. But Sensei knows better than that, dammit.

Still, the icy affront melts away too quickly, and it is his belief in the Yellow Flash (nothing more than belief - emotion is a weakness, and it is only belief and knowledge of the things that break a man) that makes Kakashi walk away without apologizing. He tells himself that this clash can be used as a necessary distraction - one that will perhaps keep his teacher from digging too deeply into his mission - and then he tells himself that there is no fear that he has finally managed to push the man away. (That this time is the last time - that maybe this two hundred and seventy-third distance is the one that will finally make the man give up. It is for the mission. It is for Sensei, because people break too easily. It is for Kakashi himself because this mission can't break him, but he thinks, somewhere deep in a place that he is not aware of, that Sensei's full knowledge of it just might.

_Sensei's full knowledge of it just might._)

Emotions are a weakness.

* * *

He lied to the Yellow Flash. He leaves Konoha immediately after their meeting, not the next morning, and does not glance back. (Kakashi has his reasons all lined up in a neat row in his mind. There is no need to count them because he does not doubt, and even if he did check them over he would willfully miss all the implications. Shinobi are so very proficient at living lies, after all, and sometimes the important reasons aren't the good ones.) He pauses in a clearing ten miles away from the border between Fire and Grass, and it is here that he undergoes his transformation. He removes his uniform and mask and burns them with a quick Katon; the ashes are deposited in the stream. The clothes he pulls out of his pack are barely fit to be called such. The trousers are a size too small with about five inches missing from the hems, the cheap material riddled with holes in strategic places that call attention to his arse. His too-large shirt is cropped almost to his belly button, the missing cloth wrapped around his bare feet, and the neck is so big that it almost slips off of one shoulder. He quickly trims the too-neat style of his hair with the only kunai he has and uses water from the creek to slick it down. He then thrusts the kunai in a log and watches the tool of his trade float away. He cannot have any weapons on him; what he does is take his single senbon and _push _it sideways into his foot - not in the sole, but in the slight arch that doesn't carry as much of his weight. It will still hurt when he walks, but he can bear it without sign, he knows. It is his fail-safe, in case he ends up so beaten by the end of this that he cannot access his chakra.

When he glances at his reflection in one of the shallow pools of water surrounding the creek, he nods in satisfaction. He is a pedophile's dream, all glowing skin and vulnerably rounded cheeks, his wiry young body shown to perfection in a very waifish way.

He destroys all evidence of his passage in the clearing and goes on his way without taking a sip of the water. He will not eat or drink until his cover is established, and there are no distances too far or measures too drastic.

He makes it to the third alleyway away from the red light district in Iwa before he passes out.

* * *

_A/N: First multi-chapter story with actual plot, the idea for which came up while chatting with Eidolys over on the Yonkaka comm at LJ. I think I'm kind of nervous. Almost fifty fics, and nary a multi-chap until this one...I'm a little out of my comfort zone, to say the least. In any case, feedback is appreciated. This is Yonkaka - Namikaze Minato and Hatake Kakashi - in future chapters, whether they actually enter a relationship or not. Kakashi is as in love with Minato as it is possible for him to be, in case that isn't clear. _

_Erm, do you think this will get my account deleted?_

_Anyway, tell me where I went wrong - possibly even where I went right. Favorite lines would be nice._


	2. Chapter 2

_Warning: the following fanfiction contains very deep wrongness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological twistedness. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please, click the back button. If slash is not your brand of vodka, then turn around immediately and don't even bother flaming._

**These Are All Things You Don't Understand**

**Chapter Two**

* * *

He awakens to a grubby, filthy room. It is rank with the smell of sex and sake, and he closes his eyes for just a second to hide the flash of victory. _One step closer_...

He is on a stained, worn futon, and on the futon next to him two people are fucking. The boy is a little younger than he with dark hair and red, tear-stained cheeks. He sobs brokenly and hysterically as the man thrusts into him, and his stick-thin right arm is beating in a steadily weaker, broken tempo against the man's chest. Kakashi listens to the man's grunts - such a universally familiar sound - and feels nothing.

The boy is still crying, his words a weak and tattered snatch. "Please...no...please stop...Mommy Mommy Mommy...stop..."

Kakashi listens to the words and files them away - he may need such genuine dialogue.

Two seconds later, the man finishes with a groan and collapses on top of the sobbing boy. He moves after a moment, pressing a kiss against the child's neck. "Not too bad, kid, but you need training." He pulls out of the boy with a squelch, and Kakashi doesn't flinch as the man's blue eyes meet his. "Ah, so you're awake!" He sits back on his haunches and zips his trousers carelessly, leaving them unbuttoned. The child slowly curls away from him in a creeping pull of knees and vulnerability and pain and shock and tears.

Kakashi - stares at the man wordlessly. He grins brightly in return, and Kakashi does not see familiarity (similarity and bonds and He Saved You and you truly hold no resentment over this mission) in this smile because he is not Hatake Kakashi; he is a runaway from a farm, eleven years old and on the verge of starving. He has a sister named Miki and a mother named Asuka and he doesn't talk about his father.

"My name is Ling, kid. Wanna tell me yours?"

Kakashi ignores the question. "...Where am I?" he asks, his eyes wide and scared. It requires no effort; the Cat was very thorough in his training.

Ling laughs. "You're in Ishida-sama's pross house, kid. Welcome to your new life. We'll feed you and give you a place to sleep, but you're Ishida-sama's newest whore until you get too old."

This is where he needs to be. This is the brothel Ikari Waya frequents. Kakashi allows none of his satisfaction to show; he is not Kakashi anymore. He is Katsu. He is a runaway from a farm, eleven years old and on the verge of starving. He has no one. "...Katsu."

(Deliberately, only a hint of the fear and panic subtly present in Katsu's gaze is noticeable in his voice as he instinctively and skillfully creates this new persona, one full of practicality and bravado and other things that make it okay for him not to be terrified and traumatized like the other boy. What is frightening is how good Kakashi is proving to be at this.)

Ling's smile widens as he stands. "Well, Katsu-chan, you're more to my taste than Shin-chan here." He jerks his head in the direction of the now silently shaking boy in fetal position on the futon behind him. "Let's get you out of those tight pants, shall we?"

He kneels next to Kakashi and caresses his exposed hip before taking his hand away. "Ne, Katsu-chan. I'm twenty-three now and not as young as I used to be. I think I'm going to need a little persuasion from that pouty mouth of yours." Even as he notes the man's reckless gift of personal information, Kakashi forces himself to flinch - no matter that he is as intimately familiar with fellatio as possible; he has to act a little. Kakashi knows that it was a test when Ling's eyes darken noticeably with lust. "Ah, no matter, Katsu-chan. We'll get to that later. I think I can manage."

The man is not gentle, but he is only brutal towards the end. When he first pushes into Kakashi, he actually allows Kakashi a half-second to adjust before slowly building up a rhythm. Kakashi "accidentally" clenches around him when the man brushes a hand down his side, and Ling gasps a little before speeding up.

The silence of the room is broken only by Ling's harsh breaths and groans and the nearly inaudible sound of Kakashi's whispers of "dango" and "ramen" and "ice cream". (The Cat told him that sometimes victims block out what is happening to them and recommended that he fake this - because of course a ninja doesn't retreat into his mind during a mission.) Kakashi pushes his hips up to meet the man just once in seeming reflex, and the man moans long and hard right before he comes.

Ling gets off a minute later and lights a cigarette. "You'll do just fine, Katsu-chan. Didn't even cry. I think you'll be a real hit here once we get you to relax."

Kakashi says nothing. His actions have fooled the man, and this is all he cares about. Ling rolls to his feet and zips up again. He slides the door open before pausing and turning to meet Kakashi's gaze. "What's your favorite color, kid?" Silence. "Ah, you'll warm up to me. See you later!" The door closes.

Ling's hair is blond.

* * *

Training begins the next day, and although Kakashi has never thought anything of his body beyond _tool_, they somehow manage to destroy any shred of a concept of personal space or self possession. Ling is often there for his training sessions. He always chats with Kakashi after, and he is glad for the source of information. Kakashi learns that Ishida, the owner, is friends with a lot of rich men who have reputations to protect - and a few shinobi who don't want their weaknesses getting out. He isn't actually in the whorehouse itself; he is in a training warehouse. The real brothel, in upper-class Iwa, supplies the perverted, high status men of Earth Country with young boys and discretion. Kakashi's ears prick up at the mention of shinobi, but Ling doesn't say anything more. It is still more than Konoha's intelligence had gathered.

He always thinks over the information he has gathered when Ling fucks him after - "to make sure those twats are teaching right". His body arches and moans and whimpers as Ling feasts on him, and he slowly but surely uses the tricks he was taught by the Cat. He gradually "relaxes" fuck by fuck until he is begging for Ling's cock.

It goes on like this for about two weeks, after which he reduces Ling to a mass of need and sheer lust; Ling nearly loses his mind, tearing Kakashi's arse to shreds, and seems very shaken afterward.

He doesn't do his usual hop-up and zip-up. Instead, he half-sits next to the wall hehas just fucked Kakashi against and stares at the east wall of the desolate courtyard they are in for about five minutes before speaking. "I'm going to talk to Ishida-sama about moving you to the main house. I ambushed you on your way to dinner - go eat something. You're too skinny."

Kakashi knew that Ling would be relatively easy to befriend the night he met the man. He follows his usual act. "But... Ling, I'll still see you, right?" He is sitting next to the man, and his plain white yukata is still hanging open. He is flushed from the sex and his thin, adolescent chest is covered with hickeys, but his eyes are wide and innocent. He looks down at his hands (at palms slightly scarred from mishaps with kunai when he was a child - and he doesn't believe that he still is one) and blushes before muttering, "You're my only friend."

Ling's eyes widen a bit at the words. He smiles as the vague, strangely guilty thought that he has been taking advantage of Katsu-chan disappears. (He does not wonder why he actually feels guilty, though he should. He has fucked so many boys, and he doesn't stop to wonder at what makes Katsu-chan different; Kakashi knows that the difference is his thorough grounding in human psychology.) Kakashi's words have sneaked through Ling's last boundary, and Ling will easily see Katsu as a true friend. (It takes so little to enslave a person - watch dynamics carefully and laugh as the superficially abused twirls a scepter behind his back.) "Don't worry about it, Katsu-kun." Kakashi knows that the subconsious change in suffix is a sign of his victory. "One of the guards at the main house will switch with me. Everyone wants my job, but... I've been getting a little tired of it. I'll go with you."

Ling is a clever man, but emotions are a weakness.

Kakashi has bought Ling with his eager body and false words and trembling, fascinated fingers. He smiles happily and leans in to give Ling a kiss. It is a first - whores don't kiss, but the Cat had him taught how to anyway - and it is purposefully shy and clumsy. Ling blinks and reddens faintly, and Kakashi blushes back.

"Right. So - dinner. Um, see you later, Ling!"

Ling's blue eyes follow him out of the courtyard.

Later, when lying in bed and going over the way he handled the situation, Kakashi thinks of the new, strange emptiness in his chest and the too-easy way cheerful, false smiles and words come - the too-easy way he shoves back flinches and glares and cutting words and the urge to puke. (He has no urge to kill everyone with the senbon still lodged in his foot. He isn't to that point - yet. He will have to battle that desire in three days, twenty-one hours, fourteen minutes, and seventeen seconds, and one of the only things that will save everyone will be Kakashi's ingrained compulsion to succeed in the mission.) He thinks of the kiss. He thinks of power and ice and that strange, foreign concept Rin once mentioned called guilt. He thinks that it is probably an appropriate emotion to have at the moment - he thinks that Obito would feel guilty. He thinks that that is the reason that Obito is not here and experiences a rush of gratitude for the village who made him who and what he is, for the village that has failed to make Obito into a successful ninja.

He does not think of Sensei.

* * *

**A/N**: I'm not going to make excuses for the lateness of this chapter, but I do have very good reasons. I apologize for the crapness of this - the next one ought to be better. Anyway, tell me what you think. Please.


	3. Chapter 3

_Warning: The following fanfiction contains very extreme darkness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological twistedness. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please, click the back button._

**These Are All Things You Don't Understand**

**Chapter Three**

_.:Dedicated to bluebimbomushi, my new wife:._

* * *

It is mid-morning, though the sky is a mass of gray that makes it impossible to tell time by the light. Kakashi is to leave in two hours, traversing the ten miles to the classier district in Iwa where Ishida's expensive brothel (that masquerades as an exclusive gentleman's club) is situated in a cart with two other boys. He doesn't know the other prostitutes beyond a glimpse caught here and there in the kitchens, and he doesn't care. Ling is off making last-minute additions to his knapsack, and Kakashi has nothing to do. He wanders. (He is stupid - careless and contemptuous and stupid, too used to these people's only fixation being pleasure and vice. Cat-sama's harsher lessons have slipped from his mind in the absence of need, and he is _so fucking stupid_ to think that they can't really harm him.)

It is in a hallway just off of the overgrown garden that he finds two of his instructors. He does not know their names; he calls them Red and Ox in his mind. They have not seen him, and he crouches behind the corner.

Red, a slim, pale young man with long red hair, looks miffed. Ox is grumbling and cracking his massive knuckles habitually as he speaks. "Dammit, why is it that we barely get to taste 'em once they get good? And, fuck me, he was getting good."

Red snorts. There is a sound of fist meeting flesh. "Get that glazed look outta your eyes, asshole. You know the reason. Besides, we get paid to fuck all day. I think it's a pretty good deal."

Ox grunts. "Doesn't matter. I want him."

"Control yourself. Do you want Ishida-sama after you?"

There is a silence and a faint scraping noise that sets Kakashi's teeth on edge. It is the sound of a blade being sharpened; Kakashi twitches slightly, stands, and turns to go back to the entry hall.

And now a reluctant mutter of, "No. No one in their right mind would."

This is the point where Kakashi gets screwed. (Only metaphorically, this time - or not.) His geta catches on a broken wooden slat and snaps it.

His too-brilliant mind races in the dead quiet that follows, trying to logically decide if he can risk concealing himself with a jutsu because running definitely won't work, will only get him in more trouble and that's something that he doesn't need right before he's supposed to be sent to the brothel -

And then it doesn't matter. They have turned the corner and caught sight of him. A leer splits Ox's scarred face, and Red's eyes have a certain glint in them that Kakashi has seen before. He closes his eyes just for a second - just a blink, really, and if he was anyone else he would be cursing himself - as they circle him (eye-fucking him), and he doesn't flinch when Red begins casually fingering the knife that he heard being sharpened a moment ago.

"Well, look at you. Y'know, I think that you should get one last training session." Red's words are malicious, hungry. "Don't you think he needs to learn his lesson, buddy?"

The blade is casually trailed down Kakashi's back, cloth parting and blood beading in its wake.

"Yeah," is all Ox manages to get out. If Red's words are hungry, Ox's entire being is starving, voracious and obsessed. The giant man is sporting an equally giant erection just at the sight of Kakashi. Kakashi doesn't manage to hold back an almost invisible flinch. He remembers Ox vividly.

Five minutes later, when Ox's truly enormous cock tears into his unstretched asshole, he turns the gasp of agony into a helpless, pleasured moan. His fingers scrabble at the hardwood floor beneath him. He clenches his muscles reflexively and feels the man's organ growing impossibly harder inside of him. Ox's huge hands squeeze Kakashi's thin hips with bone-breaking strength, and the thrusts begin. Kakashi knows what he has to do, so well-trained (thank you, Cat-sama) - he moves his hips to meet the other man's, breathing heavily and moaning wantonly. He hears a strangled "fuck" and pushes back even harder and quicker. He squeezes a few strategic muscles and feels Ox falter. This is when he takes his chance. He attempts to roll them over and succeeds when the man automatically moves to accommodate him. And now Kakashi is on top, kimono down around his forearms and up around his hips, so lewd. He rides the man skillfully and without hint of pain, even when Red sticks a finger in with Ox's cock in his bleeding ass. Even when Ox backhands him and licks the blood from Kakashi's chin - even when Red holds the knife to his throat as he gives Ox the best fuck of the pathetic man's life, the pitted edge sliding into flesh with each movement in a near-deadly parody of Ox's cock. Blood slides from his body so easily.

Kakashi doesn't bother with a realization of just how fragile his body is, how easy it would be to kill him. He will only die when the village needs him to - when he can do no more, when there are no more enemies for him to kill or missions that he is perfect for. Right now he has enemies to fuck and a target to take out and a war effort to contribute to. His father's fuck up started it, after all, and he's so good at cleaning up messes.

Kakashi can tell that Red is frustrated by the time Ox stiffens and comes. (Ox seizes Kakashi's arms by the wrists and tightens his grip as the blinding pleasure rolls through him. Dark purple bruises appear almost immediately, stark against pale skin.) Kakashi hasn't screamed or let loose a tear or grimaced or anything that Red wants, true sadist that he is.

Kakashi is breathing heavily, ostensibly in pleasure but actually in unreal amounts of pain (which is nothing he can't take - he is who his village and his father want/ed him to be). He hasn't removed Ox's now-limp penis yet, and this is when a foot slams into his head.

Red.

He senses it beforehand and doesn't attempt to dodge. He isn't allowed to, not by anyone's rules and least of all by his own. His skull snaps back and Kakashi is left trying to blink the spots out of his vision. He finds himself holding himself steady with Ox's shoulders. The big man is coming out of his post-coital haze now, and Kakashi uses his leverage to stand, enduring the fresh pain as the penis slips out. He turns to face Red with slightly unclear vision and is met with a smirk.

"I haven't had my fun yet, Katsu-chan."

* * *

Kakashi regains consciousness and is greeted by the sight of Ling's pale, frantic visage. He quickly takes stock of himself. He is still lying in the hallway - the decor has actually been greatly improved by artistic splashes of Kakashi's blood - and he is naked, of course. Red was careful not to break any bones, but his ass feels like a tree has been shoved up it (_Geez, pull that redwood outta your ass, bastard_, Obito mutters, red with anger and frustration), which is not so far from the truth, and he feels like he has been sparring with that loud, crazy, spandex-wearing taijutsu freak. In short, everything hurts.

He returns his attention to Ling, who is calling his false name.

"Katsu-kun, what the hell happened! Who did this? This - " Ling pauses and Kakashi can tell that the man is changing what he had been about to say. "This is against the rules!"

Kakashi sees worry and shock in the man's eyes and wants to smirk at the hypocrisy. Part of him, at least - the other half of his mind is whirring at high speed, trying to figure out how he can use this to his full advantage.

"'Sokay, Ling." He smiles beatifically, his mouth a swollen mass of cuts. "It was - kinda hot. I don't think I've ever come so hard."

This is untrue - Kakashi didn't come at all, but there is enough semen on and around his beaten body that he can get away with it. Ling's blue eyes darken with jealousy and want (that Kakashi will never see in _Him_, but Kakashi won't think about that. Not now and not ever because it has never been an option and is truly impossible now, all small possibilities sliced away - it is just a whisper-quiet wantwantwant that he has always refused to acknowledge). Behind it all is worry, but it is downsized even more as calculation enters the blond's gaze.

"Really. That's...interesting."

And Kakashi knows that Ling will tell Ishida that Katsu-kun won't need to be coerced into the beds of their more violent customers. Success. Kakashi feels a small sense of triumph flooding through his chest. He moves to sit up and blacks out.

(And if in the darkness he sees a blond man grinning at him, throwing an arm around his stiff shoulders and ruffling his hair with heartbreaking fondness, then he will not remember when he regains consciousness.)

* * *

Minato wakes up feeling rather pleased with life in general. This does not stop him from murdering his alarm clock again, but that is really just because of routine, not ire and exhaustion. He slowly rolls out of his futon, stretches languorously, and pads to the kitchen to start his tea kettle boiling, smiling softly all the way for no particular reason at all.

Well, this is life. What isn't there to be happy about? Yes, there is a war going on and a lot of his friends have disappeared since its start, but he has three adorable students and a cup of really delicious tea in the works. Yes, the sky is a rather nondescript grey color that promises an irritating drizzle, but he has _tea_. And he has one student to be particularly proud of.

Kakashi-kun. When the boy informed them of his mission, Minato couldn't help but be worried. And, okay, a little bit angry. (Too many missing friends, too many unidentifiable corpses.) He has long been tired of the war. He said some things that Kakashi took the wrong way, and they didn't part well. It'll be okay, though. Now that Minato has had time to settle down, he can't help but be glad for Kakashi for being deemed capable of such a mission. The higher ups have finally acknowledged the boy, and his student deserves it.

His. His student. Minato's small smile turns into a blinding grin as he absent-mindedly pours himself a cup of tea.

As soon as Kakashi gets back, Minato decides, he will take the kid out to ramen.

He is so proud, and maybe he will get that I'm-pleased-and-definitely-not-a-little-embarrassed-because-I-don't-do-embarrassment-or-for-that-matter-"pleased"-so-I'm-not-pleased-at-all-stop-looking-at-me-like-you-can-see-through-my-mask-you-idiot-sensei body language from Kakashi when he tells him so. Minato grins even wider at the thought, staring at the kitchen wall as he imagines it. It is so rare that anyone gets anything from Hatake Kakashi, and Minato treasures every little drop of humanity that he manages to wring from the young prodigy.

This is when his gaze falls on the clock.

A lot of things happen in the next second, the first being the relocation of Minato's tea from his cup to his lap. There is much swearing and casual abuse of A-rank and unranked jutsu in the three seconds after that one as the blond strips, heals his blistered skin, has his clothes jump onto his body, and disappears from the flat.

Later, as he listens with half an ear to Obito's well-loved and well-trod mutterings (_stupid asshole and his __dumbass mission are taking way too long - I could have done better, dammit_), Minato feels that addictive warmth suffusing his rib cage again.

He's just so damn proud.

* * *

Kakashi wakes to Ling's cock penetrating him. He immediately responds, moving his hips in tandem and wrapping his legs around Ling's waist. He slides his thin fingers down the man's sweat-damp back and breathes harshly into the crook of Ling's neck, not flinching at the horrible pain that is everywhere, even inside his pores and cells and blood. Pain really isn't worth flinching at anymore, and he has thought before that he knew this but knows now that he didn't. He automatically moans throatily as Ling makes a slow, deep thrust.

There is a split second where his subconscious tricks itself into thinking that the blond hair rubbing his cheek as he is fucked belongs to the Yellow Flash. Kakashi does not notice, but that is nothing new. He never notices. He's very good at that, so good that he doesn't even notice that he doesn't notice.

He does not notice that he has ejaculated until Ling removes himself. The cum that has been spread all over his stomach and chest by Ling's weight is so incongruous that he doesn't recognize it at first.

And then it fades into unimportance (like everything that is personal or meaningful or maybe could bring him some measure of self beyond "ninja" or "genius") because the mission is calling.

Ling's voice is relaxed and satisfied when he says to the ceiling, "Clean up. The boss wants to meet with you in an hour."

Kakashi tries to push himself into sitting position. He is more than likely capable of it, but he knows he shouldn't show this. He is Katsu. He puts on a pained grimace and looks at the blond guard with pleading, slightly impish eyes.

"Um. Do you mind helping me bathe, Ling?"

The blond turns incredibly blue eyes his way and grins brightly, and Kakashi does not see familiarity (similarity and bonds and HE SAVED YOU - and Kakashi truly holds no resentment over this mission) in that smile.

They experiment with breath play in the bath.

* * *

**A/N: **Yes, this took a while. But I am now extremely psyched about the rest of this story. (grins happily) My lovely wifeh, the one and only **Zhang Sizheng**, helped me out on this one. Without her, I would have dithered between plot lines for a few more days. It was very mad-hatterly inspirational that night on both sides. It was like we were feeding off of each other. She wrote, I wrote, we both went nutters over the other's stuff - and holy fuckity, you've got to read her new oneshot, DEJA VU. It's incredibly painful and completely magnificent. It broke my heart. Think for a second about what I write. ...Yeah. Poor Kakashi.

And this is a wedding present for **bluebimbomushi**. She is brilliant brilliant brilliant, and I've finally landed her! Okay, so it was my fault for taking so long to get this chapter out, but... Yay anyway! (dances gleefully)

To the reviewers: you have been so very kind and patient. Thank you! I hope you liked it!


	4. Chapter 4

_Warning: The following fanfiction contains very extreme darkness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological twistedness. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please, click the back button._

**These Are All Things You Don't Understand**

**Chapter Four**

* * *

Kakashi is in the bathroom. He is wet and naked and standing in front of the mirror, and he -

He has a moment of dissociation. There is a boy in front of him. The boy's skin is a grotesque sort of art, bruises of all colors painted on and scabbed cuts slashing across pale flesh in angry brown. His mouth is swollen and there is an enormous bruise mapping his cheekbone. He has a black eye and there is a sweep of dirty blue sprawling over his chest like a lover. (Possibly from when Red shoved him on his stomach and yanked back his head by his hair and fisted him as roughly as he could, banging Kakashi's thin upper body against the wood with every near-punch that masqueraded as a thrust - and forget the pain because it is ephemeral.) Dark purple is finger-painted down his ribs (and toddlers don't enter Kakashi's mind only because he does not recognize that small children do such a thing - or even that finger-painting exists) and clusters of bruises encircle his bony wrists thickly like bracelets.

His hips are simply masses of bruises. He almost doesn't turn to look at his back - and then he does it anyway because he is Hatake Kakashi (is who his village and father want/ed him to be). He stares at his back for a long moment and -

Limps (staggers) stiffly out of the bathroom.

The mistake is made when he attempts to pull himself together and walk faster (get the hell away from that mirror that is not reflecting him - _not him_). He feels his ripped rectum _spasm_ and all he sees is an expensive carpet rushing to meet his face.

He does not recognize any pain.

* * *

And here is waking up. Again. A tight feeling appears in his throat when he opens his eyes and there is no reddened, sweaty face twisted with pleasure as its owner fucks him. He manages to recognize the strange feeling as relief. And then it fades and all that is left is a strange disappointment.

He skillfully does not consider what there could possibly be for him to be disappointed over. Instead, he scans the room - and there is a man standing in the corner.

Kakashi does not tense. He allows his breathing to change, however, and the man walks closer with nearly silent footsteps. Kakashi turns his face towards the man, who can't stop a small grimace from flitting across his extremely attractive face and seems to be in his thirties.

The handsome man says, "You look hideous."

Kakashi stares at the man incredulously for a half-second, for once unsure of how to act. "I... apologize."

"You should. In any case, this has been something of an inconvenience. I have heard so much from young Ling, and here you are and here I am, and the medic-nin says you aren't to be fucked for three days."

Again, Kakashi doesn't know what to say. He settles for, "Well, sir, I'll be sure to look forward to it."

"Call me Ishida-sama, child." The man Kakashi now knows is his owner scans him again. "Hm. I suppose you might be beautiful under the damage."

Beauty has only ever been a tool to Kakashi. He finds the entire conversation to be rather surreal. "I hope I will satisfy, Ishida-sama." He shifts his body experimentally and cautiously, but no pain rips through his arse and spine. There are simply a few aches and twinges. "You mentioned a medic-nin, sir?"

Ishida's face darkens. "Yes. You were very seriously injured, so injured that the medic-nin is resting before she heals your superficial wounds. Tell me who did it."

Kakashi knows what to say here. "No, sir."

The man's eyes are boring through him. "I own you, child. Tell me who did it or I will make their treatment of you seem like a stroll through the woods."

Kakashi remains silent.

Ishida moves quickly - very quickly, as though he has had some shinobi training. The backhand sounds very loud in the stillness of the room, and Kakashi's head snaps back. He allows his breathing to pick up and slowly turns slightly aroused eyes towards the brothel owner. It is a natural reaction to him now - a somewhat disturbing one, even to his imperturbable mind (because the lie is becoming a little bit of a truth), but he pushes the realization aside to deal with later. (Never, of course. Just like he will never deal with his love for his sensei or his incredible hatred for his father or his twisted set of priorities.)

"Ishida-sama," he says, as if he is about to placate the man. And then a reversal into disrespectful words and tone, as if having changed his mind: "I won't tell you."

A punch this time, one with casual and terrible power behind it, and he can literally feel his cheekbone crack. His breathing catches, and then he lets a slightly breathy moan escape before freezing up for a second as if he has been trying to keep from showing his arousal.

And the act works. Ishida lowers his hand just a fraction, stares for a second, and abruptly bursts into laughter. "Well. You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?"

Kakashi averts his eyes as if embarrassed and mumbles, "You implied that no one would be touching me for the next few days. I figured..."

"That you'd take what you could. My, my." He is smiling broadly, and he looks like any genial and successful businessman in the world. "How very interesting."

Kakashi looks up, solemn now. "Sir, I really can't tell you, though. It's against my principles."

Ishida seems to be much more receptive in his amusement. "And what principles are these?"

"I don't kiss and tell, for one."

Another laugh. "And?"

"Sir, I'm a whore, but that doesn't mean I can't try to be the best at what I do."

Evidently, this is extremely funny. Kakashi hasn't known before this moment exactly how entertaining Katsu's character is, but he is deeply grateful. That means he hasn't fucked up the mission. (And he is slowly forgetting that this is actually a mission, becoming almost too used to what his life consists of now. He is almost close to forgetting that this hasn't always been his life.)

"Very well, then," Ishida says after his laughter has calmed. His eyes shine with amusement. "I'll let you keep your secrets. And I do think that Ling was right to recommend you. I may change my mind, but I find myself rather curious."

Suddenly Ishida's eyes are predatory and his body language is screaming sex. Kakashi allows lust to cloud his face and rasps out, "Curious about what, sir?"

The intensity of Ishida's gaze is such that Kakashi truly feels naked. The man smiles a smile that does nothing to set Kakashi at ease and replies easily, "Exactly how good of a whore you are. We'll see, won't we."

"Yes, sir."

"Don't disappoint me, Katsu-kun."

And with that, Ishida leaves.

Kakashi doesn't know a lot of things, for a genius. But as he gazes thoughtfully at the door Ishida shut behind him, he knows a few things that are rather important. He knows that Ishida is dangerous and intelligent and unpredictable and quick. He knows that the man hasn't seen through his cover. He knows that the man has a temper. He knows that the man is possessive. He knows that he is curious about Ishida in a few of the worst ways, and he knows that he does not like the sensation.

Most of all, Kakashi knows that his mission has just become about 3.5 times as likely to fail.

He rolls over carefully and quickly falls asleep.

* * *

Out of everything that Kakashi passively and carefully does not dislike about this mission, perhaps the most irritating is how he has had to override his habit of catnapping and truly sleep instead. He keeps waking up to people in his space, and it is very wearing on his nerves.

It is Ling again, and the blond is pacing. Kakashi knows what is coming.

He finds himself saying, "Good morning, Ling."

Ling whirls around and seems to be beside his bed in a blink. "It's four in the afternoon, Katsu-kun - not that it matters. How did the talk with the boss go?" He appears to be very anxious about this.

Kakashi blinks. "Um. It went fine, I think."

Ling relaxes all at once. "Thank Kami."

"Why?"

"He was very angry when we didn't answer his summons. I forgot to send a messenger to tell him that you had collapsed and were being healed, and it was - well, it wasn't a very good impression. And apart from that, I was in the wrong for not calling our medic as soon as we got here. I was worried he might..." And then he trails off.

But Kakashi knows how dangerous Ishida is and doesn't ask stupid questions. He doesn't give any hint of disapproval, either. He doesn't need to. Ling isn't stupid, just a man who is weak against vice, and the blond knows he fucked up.

Just like he knows he shouldn't have fucked Kakashi after what Red and Ox did.

So all Kakashi says is, "He laughed a lot."

Ling's face tightens again. "Katsu-kun, you need to be very careful with Ishida-sama. If he laughed, then he liked you - but that can be a bad thing, because that means he'll remember you."

Ling doesn't need to tell Kakashi to be careful, but Kakashi finds it slightly ironic that that seems to be what the man is attempting to do.

"Don't worry, Ling. I'll watch out."

The blond sighs. Ling has changed since their first meeting - become more solemn, more focused, less immature. Kakashi knows that this is because of Katsu.

He doesn't feel guilty for changing the man or playing him false. Guilt is one of the many emotions Kakashi does not recognize as a personal experience, and he will kill the blond peon without compunction if it becomes necessary.

(And he would never regret or feel a little heartbroken or satisfied or pleased or sad - he does not see his teacher in Ling, and he feels no vague affection towards the man for even his own merits. Neither does he hate Ling even a little - or love him.)

As Ling's blue eyes examine him worriedly, all Kakashi feels is hollow.

* * *

The next day is when the entire organization comes under the danger of being brutally exterminated.

Kakashi is alone in the lavish bedroom, and there are no subtle taps on the door that are used to signal a servant's entrance. Kakashi is alone, and he needs very badly to clean himself. He smells more rank than the time lapse warrants, and he feels utterly disgusting.

It isn't a serious deal-breaker. It realistically isn't an enormously big deal. But no one is around and he _needs_ to get clean immediately. He slowly rolls himself out of bed and carefully limps to the bathroom.

He is capable of the journey, but he suddenly notices how hard it is.

And then he notices the disparity between his usual conditioning and fitness and the state of his body now.

The thought causes him to sink down onto the toilet lid, his old t-shirt still in his hands. The thought causes him to methodically rest his right foot on his left thigh and gaze at the skin of the sole that he knows hides a senbon. (It doesn't take much for him to be lethal. And he isn't feeling very capable at the moment.)

The thought continues on to think, _I wonder how obvious Konoha's responsibility would be if I killed everyone here._

And underneath _that_ thought is yet another one - a secret one, even from himself. It is: _I wonder if I'm still capable of killing everyone here._

He actually begins to manipulate the chakra in his foot that will push out the senbon. The metallic point is piercing his skin when it stops moving.

After twenty-eight seconds, Kakashi takes his thumb and slowly drives it back in.

(It is no one's business what goes through his mind in those twenty-eight seconds. But maybe - if there is any benevolent force in the world at all at all at all - he thinks of his sensei. Maybe he finally recognizes that he still has people who love him and would never screw him over like most others have.

It's doubtful.)

After that, the three days pass quickly and strangely. Kakashi has grown used to the invasion of his body, and after eight hours without a pounding, he feels incredibly twitchy - like runners who are incapable of running after gaining the habit do.

The first to fuck him after the three days are up is Ling. Kakashi wakes up when the blond pushes his penis in, and he -

He moans, really and truly. He is amazingly full and slumberous, and he sees a fringe of sunny hair when he cracks open his eyes.

This is what he moans. He moans, "Minato."

* * *

**A/N:** Yes? No? Want to kill me? (cackles) Do tell! (pets big, fluffy cat evilly)

So I was supposed to post this yesterday, right after I posted my new Yonkaka oneshot (SEE CROWS FLY THIS LIFE. Yes, this is a blatant plug) but my sober moment was interrupted and my laptop abandoned.

_Am so glad midterms week is over._ Everyone was so stressed and studying like nuts, and even though I was ridiculously chill about it, people hate you a little for not stressing out. I mean, other students at the cafe got pretty snappy if their studying was interrupted. It got kind of gory, actually.

Anyway...feedback is greatly appreciated.


	5. Chapter 5

_Warning: The following fanfiction contains very extreme darkness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological twistedness. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please click the back button._

**These Are All Things You Don't Understand**

**Chapter Five**

* * *

It is a disaster.

He moaned, "Minato." He moaned and -

Here is now. Here Ling freezes and Ling stays still and Kakashi freezes as well, suddenly very awake.

_No._

"Katsu." _No._"Katsu, what - what the fuck did you just say?"

_No no no._

"No." Wide black eyes stare into equally startled blue and _see_ for once. "I can't - " _I can't have just said that. I don't - I don't _want. _I don't want that. I can't want that. _"I can't want that."

But he sees. Kakashi sees with a shattering sense of delusion Ling's blue eyes and blond hair. He thinks of Ling's not-familiar (not not not similar or a reminder of tight bonds or HE SAVED ME BUT HE ISN'T SAVING ME NOW) smile and feels the things that hold his self-deceits together as they are in the process of disintegrating (like a corpse).

"Katsu, you - " And Ling trails off, still in shock and still inside Kakashi. Still not knowing what to say.

This is when Kakashi's own shock and upheaval fades into unimportance (like everything that is personal or meaningful or maybe could bring him some measure of self beyond "ninja" or "genius") because the mission is calling. This is when Kakashi dismisses yet again his own self-importance and lets another - perhaps the last - chance to be more than a shinobi pass him by loudly. This is when he begins to think about what this means for the mission.

This is when he finds himself burying his face in Ling's neck and tightening his legs around the (wrong) blond's waist.

"Please," his mouth says softly and raggedly into Ling's throat. "Please don't hate me."

Kakashi feels with his skin that Ling loses some of his tension at these words.

"Tell me," Ling says.

And Kakashi lies.

* * *

his name is katsu. he has a sister named miki and a mother named asuka and he doesn't talk about his father, ever, but he is a rough man who is too used to the hard life of farming in rock country. he starts fucking his son when katsu is six. it is a casual action that the man never loses sleep over. see, katsu is too young and small and fine-boned to be very helpful, so the man is simply making katsu useful in other ways. asuka doesn't look katsu in the eye when he goes to her for help. she tells him not to say such disgusting things. miki, who is thirteen, bitterly tells him that it is time he starts helping out. miki has always been a very beautiful child, just like katsu.

his name is katsu, and he is very used to men shoving their things in his asshole. when he turns nine and still looks to be six, his father grows irritated at his uselessness and starts selling him to friends.

when he is ten, he meets an eighteen year old named minato. minato does not know that katsu is basically a whore. minato does not think of katsu that way at all.

but katsu is very used to thinking that way and is mildly shocked when he finally figures out that he is talking with someone who doesn't. he continues meeting the teen whenever he can slip away from the farm and his father. he learns to fish and swim and how to move quietly in the woods.

a month after meeting minato, he seduces him.

(love, Kakashi says to Ling. i didn't say it. i don't say it.)

katsu seduces minato with desperate kisses and pleading words (so new, now, because he never kisses his father or his father's friends) until they are They and minato is his his his. minato stubbornly refuses to have sex with him until katsu is older, but they are They and minato is his his his.

but minato is killed and katsu runs away from the farm, eleven years old and on the verge of starving. he has a sister named miki and a mother named asuka and a father he doesn't talk about. he is found by the brothel and trained to please instead of endure.

(you look like him, Kakashi tells Ling.)

* * *

It is almost a good lie. It is dramatic but not over the top - farming is a very tough job in Iwa, and those who try to do it must be very hard people by necessity, people with no other option but to stay stay stay and battle the harsh earth. Kakashi does not cry or touch Ling at all while the lies pass his lips - is in fact careful to smile a little, in keeping with Katsu's character.

His eyes are dry and his breathing is even and it is a good lie.

Kakashi opens the window after Ling leaves (leaves with sober eyes and tight lines around his mouth; somehow, Katsu's story affects him when all the other little boys he has fucked haven't). Kakashi opens the window and breathes the air that does not smell of sex and sweat. He opens the window and does not notice the cold rush into his lungs.

He opens opens opens the window. He opens the window and looks at the grey haze of a sky and -

The thought comes on its own. It is evidently the single thought left when all other thoughts are gone, when the mind is silent and turmoil is boxed away.

This thought is this thought: _I want Minato. _

And then a torrent: _Want Minato want to wake up with him and ride his cock and swallow him to the root and give him pleasure want to thread my fingers through his hair and memorise the texture want to kiss him kiss him kiss him and have it be enough to validate life want to memorise his body with my fingertips and have him do the same want him to want me want him beside me want him to smile for me want him to tease me and teach me and love me._

He looks at his thoughts. He looks at the want he has never looked at, the want he didn't know was there before this mission - the want that has never been this explicit before, and this mission has been educational if nothing else. He examines this want carefully and tastes it on his tongue, trying it out.

Denial has been ripped savagely away. Denial hasn't had a chance to rebuild itself, and now - now he sees and there is only a sort of numbness that comes from knowing that something will never happen, from knowing that he has been too careless with the only heart he has.

He looks at this enormous, incredible want and says to the autumn air, very softly and mechanically, "No."

_No. No no no. _

_No._

He says no. He looks at everything he could try to fight for, looks at all the pain that will come and the goal he will never achieve - and he says no. He knows what he is refusing when he does this. He knows that he will never have anything that is personal or meaningful or could maybe bring him some measure of self beyond "ninja" or "genius".

He sees and knows and recognizes and prefers it that way.

And this is what he begins running through his mind. _Number one: A shinobi must always show allegiance to his kage. Number two: A shinobi must always carry out the assigned mission unless it endangers his kage..._

Hatake Kakashi walks away from the window with eyes that are only eyes.

* * *

The second person to fuck Kakashi after the three days up is Ishida. It is about twelve hours after the incident with Ling, and Kakashi is nothing but focused. He is nothing but focused, reaffirmed in the shinobi way and stopping stone cold all slight humanity that has sneaked into his nature over the course of the mission.

So Ishida fucks him. Kakashi has been curious about Ishida in the worst kind of way, but now all he feels as Ishida skillfully brings them both to climax is a slight pain in his neck and a slight emptiness in his chest. (But he will get used to that again.) He moans and writhes and slides his hands down Ishida's firm back as their bodies conjoin forcefully. He makes breathy noises and gasps Ishida's name incoherently and shudders when he comes - shudders again when Ishida comes, wetness filling him.

And he is tired. Empty. Almost on the verge of dropping his act and simply torturing Ishida until the handsome man vomits up everything he knows about the target, Ikari Waya. (All Kakashi knows is that Ikari is twenty-five years old and well-known member of Iwa's jounin corps. The page on him in the Bingo Book is very sparse. Kakashi gathers from that that not very many ninja survive fighting the man. He knows that whoever commissioned Ikari's assassination must have wanted him dead very sincerely because they are paying Konoha an astronomical amount. He knows that Ikari makes mistakes - because anyone stupid enough to anger someone with that many resources is nothing less than a fool.)

As Kakashi smirks at Ishida teasingly and begins trailing his mouth down to the man's groin to start the next round, he wants very much for this mission to be successful and in the past already.

He is ready to go home.

"_Katsu_," Ishida rasps out as Kakashi deep-throats him. He pulls Kakashi up and quickly positions him over his saliva-gleaming cock.

Kakashi rides Ishida wantonly and claws the man's chest in ecstasy when Ishida backhands him again (silently begging for more pain: PLEASE, SIR, DO ME ONE MORE TIME), and he is ready to go home.

He is ready to go home.

* * *

Ishida is very pleased with him. Kakashi knows this because Ishida fucks him another five times over the course of the next day and is rather vocal with his approval.

_("You, child, are extremely skilled with your tongue. I believe Ling deserves a raise for you." _

_Kakashi replies, "Only my tongue is skilled?" and straddles the man again - and Ishida flips him over with a predatory smirk and - )_

Kakashi also knows something else, something he doesn't think very many are aware of.

Ishida was once a prostitute. He knows all the tricks too well not to have been, and Kakashi is pushed to his limits when he is with the man.

But this is not really helpful, and Kakashi instead waits for the next move with a strong sense of passive urgency. (He wants to go home wants to go home no place like home.)

It is two days after his most recent round with Ishida when Ling speaks to him again. Ling enters the too-lavish bedroom Kakashi has been placed in and looks at him seriously.

"How are you doing?"

This is possibly the most stupid and awkward thing Kakashi has ever heard spoken, and he knows (wants want wants and refuses to pursue) Namikaze Minato, gorgeous dweeb extraordinaire.

Nevertheless, Kakashi replies, "I'm doing well. Ishida-sama has been kind to me."

Ling's big blue eyes are trained on him, and it takes everything Kakashi has not to flinch at the suddenly obvious resemblance.

And then: "I have to know - do you still love him?"

And suddenly Kakashi is too tired for all of this - too tired to pretend when asked something about a good lie that is too close to the truth. (And he should know better than to like a lie too much, but is so incredibly impossible and stunning and beautiful to even lie about having Minato return his affections.) Kakashi is tired and Katsu drops away for only an instant, leaving old eyes that are only eyes.

"I can't love what doesn't exist anymore, Ling."

_What never existed in the first place._

He changes back to Katsu smoothly and continues to look into Ling's (fucking blue) eyes steadily.

The blond lets out his breath. "I - good. That - um. Good. Um. And - do you see him in me? You said that he looked like me, and - "

Kakashi cuts him off with a knowing gaze and an affectionate smile (wants to kill kill kill and never have to look at the man again). "No, Ling, I am not projecting my dead love onto you."

Ling can't look him in the eye. It is almost amusing how flustered the usually casual and almost crude man is. He says, "I - good. That - that's good."

There is silence. "So am I needed for something?"

"Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I was to tell you that you begin working tonight."

Kakashi is not excited, but he feels something in him release a small tension he hadn't even noticed.

_One step closer. _

"Good," he says aloud. And suddenly, "Ling, I've _missed _you."

Ling does everything but blush. "Oh."

"Yeah. Um. Do you think you'd be missed right now?"

"What? Missed? No way," he replies too eagerly - and then he smiles, his (fucking fucking fucking blue) eyes alight with want (like Minato's will never be, not for Kakashi).

Kakashi stands and walks to the doorway where Ling has hovered. He grasps the sash of the blond's too-nice kimono and slowly draws the taller male toward him.

"Then stay," he says with an inviting smile.

Hatake Kakashi never flinches at anything required for the success of a mission. He doesn't mind pain or filth or humiliation or immorality or death. He doesn't mind being wounded for the sake of success - and if Konoha requires it, he will die.

Ling kisses him with passion and fucks him with vigor and holds him close to his chest after (like a teddy bear). Kakashi stares at Ling's smooth chest while the man naps and wishes very dearly that Ling was anything but blond-haired and blue-eyed.

He doesn't want the sensation of a knife in his lungs every time he looks at the man, but he stares stares stares and thinks to himself that the feeling isn't going to go away.

(It isn't something he can kill, even though it doesn't take much for him to be lethal.)

* * *

Ling doesn't wake up until a few hours later. It is around five in the afternoon, judging by the shadows stretching across the floor, and Kakashi has not slept. (He has stayed awake and stared as Ling clutched him - like a teddy bear.) He is startled when Ling suddenly turns frantic after realizing the time.

"Katsu, you don't understand!" the young man says as he whirls around Kakashi's room, producing an elaborate mountain of material out of nowhere. "Ishida will fucking kill me if we keep the customers waiting!"

All of their problems and issues seem to be forgotten in the face of Ishida's possible wrath. Kakashi can't help the tension that evaporates from his shoulders as he listens to the blond talk and is dressed.

(But he does not take any personal enjoyment in Ling's company. He feels no vague affection towards the man for even his own merits.)

"Well," Kakashi interrupts finally, smiling, "you'll just have to make me the most entrancing and lucrative boy there."

Kakashi says this as if that isn't Katsu in a nutshell - the best whore in the world.

(As if that isn't Kakashi in a nutshell.)

* * *

**A/N**: So the shinobi rules that Kakashi begins repeating in his mind are not my property - they're off of a fic here that I don't remember the title of. Yeah. All credit to the author of said fic.

Everyone! You must worship me for getting this out so quickly. Right? Don't you love me? Or maybe you hate me, which is totally alright as long as YOU TELL ME IN A REVIEW. It is absolutely ridiculous how many people have Favorited and Alerted this but haven't reviewed. Seriously. _Ridiculous._

I'd like everyone to take a moment right now and think of all the terrible and/or wonderful ways this fic can go. Just - just think about it. _It can be anything. _If you think that there are no more floors that can be pulled out from under Kakashi, then you are so effin' wrong. And there is, of course, the questionable option where he gains some amount of happiness.

In any case, tell me what you think. I'd truly appreciate feedback on how the characters are turning out - and especially if you think I'm getting too graphic. Forever in debt to your priceless advice, kids. (Not being sarcastic.)


	6. Chapter 6

_Warning: the following fanfiction contains very deep wrongness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological twistedness. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please, click the back button. If slash is not your brand of vodka, then turn around immediately and don't even bother flaming._

**These Are All Things You Don't Understand**

**Chapter Six**

**

* * *

  
**

This is the Sandaime.

He is standing by the enormous, ego-pandering window in his office. Tired eyes look at the breath-taking view but don't see, and he smokes a pipe that has long since gone out.

He feels old. He remembers the image of talented, brilliant young Kakashi standing in front of him - _"Accepted, Hokage-sama." - _and feels even older.

The boy hasn't returned yet.

Sarutobi closes his eyes and doesn't wish or pray (because leaders of ninja villages aren't allowed to be so fanciful). What he does instead is think. He thinks for the thousandth time of every single thing Intelligence found out about the target and the mission parameters - thinks of every spy who can't check up on Kakashi without compromising their status and every power in his arsenal that he cannot use without raising the possibility of war with Snow on top of war with Rock.

He thinks of delicate and dangerous situations and is wise enough to have long since trained wall-demolishing urges out of himself.

He thinks of how Minato's face will crack and his hands will tremble and his gaze will be the personification of disbelief when informed of his student's death. He thinks of the response that will tumble out of nerveless lips: "What are you talking about, old man?" Or maybe a simple and elegant: "You're wrong."

He thinks of -

He thinks of all of the things that Minato will never know.

He thinks of all the things that he himself will never know - every horrible, terrible, heartbreaking thing that he will never hear from Kakashi's dutiful mouth or see in the boy's eyes or read in the mission report.

He can't find it in himself to feel relieved.

When he finally goes to sleep a couple of hours before dawn, he dreams of Kakashi reciting his mission report.

The sun has yet to rise when Sarutobi is staring out of his office window again.

(He is waiting. His ANBU detail wonders what exactly he is waiting for.)

This is the Sandaime.

* * *

This is life as an exercise in what shouldn't be. This is life - Kakashi's life - as an exercise in meaninglessness (not meaningless, in Kakashi's eyes - but Kakashi's eyes are Konoha-tinted and fixed on Minato, so no one should listen to him. He doesn't know any better) and apathy and every _wrong wrong wrong_ situation dreamed up by humans like they are gods.

This is a mission that is only a new twist on an old, worn-out routine of countless missions (coming rapid-fire sluggish since the age of five). Kakashi looks at the fat old man snoring beside him and sees a tolerable (no, it is _wrong wrong wrong_) situation. The extremely powerful, titled name Ling had hissed to Kakashi earlier will make Ishida very pleased.

Kakashi knows that Ishida's pleasure should be the last thing on his mind. He stares at the ceiling and tries to think to the rhythm of his trick's snores of anything except a good fucking. His sharp eyes trace the texture of the painted surface above him, and his body does not hum with suppressed tension.

He finds it unpleasant that his body is betraying him, but he is used to betrayal. (where is your mother, hatake kakashi - where is your first team - sakumo. sakumo sakumo sakumo. father. _traitor_.) His fingers feel twitchy and his shoulders tight, and this is because his customer had the desire but, despite power and respect and connections and fancy titles, did not have the ability to sustain an erection.

Kakashi is very accustomed to the use of his body. He is so accustomed, in fact, that even the old man's dry, wrinkled hands aroused him almost immediately (automatic response, like he automatically says yes to any mission his village asks of him - and maybe he has been a whore for his whole life and is only now officially given his membership card). And now it is hours later. The man is asleep and Kakashi is restless. He silently lifts himself from the bed.

He wonders somewhat detachedly what the hell he is doing - what the fuck this new twist is. There is never an answer to any of the important questions, though, so...

Once he is outside of his customer's suite, his body seems to lose its mindless sense of purpose. Kakashi finds himself wandering the unusually silent halls of the luxurious brothel. He thinks it is probably an hour or two before sunrise, and it seems that everyone is either fucking or asleep for the night.

And then he finds himself frozen in the doorway of what seems to be a study as his gaze locks with Ishida's. The handsome man is sitting at an antique desk with a saucer of sake before him. He is magnificent even in the dim light, and every half-born thought fades. Kakashi's blood burns.

There is a voice disrupting the air between them, young and polite and distanced and his. "Ishida-sama."

"Katsu. Why are you here?"

In this moment Ishida is the entire universe distilled, intense and still and burning and vivid like the definition of glorious. Kakashi does not even try to glance away.

Nor does he try to answer. Instead his bare feet step on plush carpet - step step step step step step stop.

He moans and screams without artifice when Ishida fucks him hard. The perfect penis of his owner slams in and out of his asshole as the edge of the desk raises a red line on his lower back and Ishida's hands around his neck cut off his air supply.

He nearly passes out when he climaxes, darkness prevalent on the edges of his vision and purple explosions dancing in the air. A few minutes later, he regains clarity to find Ishida collapsed on top of him, cock still inside.

Kakashi finds himself staring at yet another ceiling. This one is an elegant cream that goes well with the age-darkened wood of the furnishings.

This is what he thinks of: interior design. He does not wonder what he thinks he is doing because he is very good at ignoring things he doesn't want the answer to.

(Like Minato.)

He stares stares stares at the ceiling du jour, waiting because Ikari Waya has not shown his face.

Kakashi waits.

(And if he finds himself willingly and at his own initiation having sex with a man who is as good as his enemy while he waits, he is not compromising the mission.)

Kakashi waits to kill Ikari. Kakashi waits to go home. Kakashi waits to see Minato - he doesn't want to try for something romantic with the man, but _if he could just_ _see Minato -_

He is tired of seeing Minato in Ling's face.__

Kakashi waits.

* * *

Ikari Waya does not show up the next night, either, or the night after that.

Or the night after that - and so on and so forth for days days days days that add up to equal twenty-three.

(He smiles and is fucked by thirty-four men in sixteen different positions. Kakashi is sure he could describe all of them if asked, but he is for some reason incapable of calling up their faces from the files of his perfect memory. They are blurred out and blurred together, and the vivacity of life is an inconsequential smallness that has never mattered to the shinobi who is nothing more than a shinobi.)

This is the twenty-third night. This is the twenty-third night, and Kakashi is stopped short when he enters the lounge as he has done twenty-three times and sees for the first time -

Ling leans down and hisses in his ear, "He's Ikari Waya. Ninja. Don't - "

But Kakashi has had a half-second to cross Ling out of his life and is moving before Ling can finish warning him away from Ikari.

He should be excited but isn't.

He is going home. So very soon now, he will be running the distance to Konoha, to Minato and his life and - _why isn't joy or relief or some other emotion he is barely capable of labeling rising in his chest?_

(Perhaps because some part of him has realized that he will not really fit in Konoha anymore, not even as silently and apathetically and not-fitting-fitting as he once did. Perhaps he changed too much the instant he fucked Ishida willingly. Perhaps it was when he - )

But it doesn't matter. Here is his mission.

Here: he is moving closer and closer to Ikari. As he does so, he registers that the man is speaking with Ishida. They stop talking when they notice him drifting lightly their way. Kakashi feels strangely detached and dissociated. It is Katsu who crosses the lounge and seems to float with grace (that Kakashi learned when he trained to be a killer) and youth (that he does not feel) and beauty (that he does not care about).

But then he feels the senbon acutely, buried in muscle and wrapped by veins and a tenth of a centimeter away from grating against one of the bones in his foot - and he is Kakashi again. He smiles now, falsely and automatically and easily and one of the many that Cat-sama taught him. The target smiles back slowly, eyes sharp with lust and greed.

Here is his mission.

* * *

**A/N**: Yes, this took me forever. Yes, it's short. Yes, my laptop did die a couple of weeks ago. Yes, it's horribly inconvenient and I've been on the edge of sanity without my daily net fix.

Anyway, I'd appreciate feedback on this, especially favorite lines. (Especially from you zillions of lurkers who have me on Alert.) Feel free to speculate at me - it's amusing. Only one person guessed something I was planning on doing last time. XD I'll try to get the next chapter up before term starts in January, but I've got an enormously large to-do list in the request department and make no promises.


	7. Chapter 7

_Warning: the following fanfiction contains very deep wrongness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological twistedness. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please, click the back button. If slash is not your brand of vodka, then turn around immediately and don't even bother flaming._

**These Are All Things You Don't Understand**

**Chapter Seven  
**

**

* * *

**

Here is his mission.

Ikari is an average-looking man. There are no scars - none that are visible, at least. His hair is black and his eyes are gray and he is maybe 5"9. He has an amiable default expression and a strange habit of moving his jaw from side to side every few minutes. He looks perfectly ordinary, perfectly harmless -

This is what Kakashi takes in in a few seconds - and also that Ikari would be the first Kakashi would kill if they were ambushed during a mission, simply out of instinct. There is something vividly dangerous about the way the Rock nin moves, and Ishida recognizes it and Ling recognizes it and -

Hell, a blind kid could probably taste it in the air around him.

But Kakashi acts like he doesn't notice, nothing but sexual interest in his body language. He barely acknowledges Ishida, eyes trained on Ikari. Ikari meets his gaze straight on, and it is like they are already fucking.

"Hello," Kakashi purrs. "I'm Katsu. Care to share your name?"

There is lust in the target's eyes, sex-lust and blood-lust. Said eyes go half lidded, but it doesn't hide the promise of violence in them. "You can call me Kami."

Ishida twitches his hand and that is all. Kakashi almost recognizes a strange urge to laugh (whether out of hysteria or disgust or bemusement or amusement or just plain _this is what I've done all this for? _realization, he does not know) but does nothing except widen his smile aggressively. "I'm sure I will. Perhaps you'd like to go somewhere a little more private?"

This time it is Ishida's jaw that twitches instead of his hand.

"Certainly, Katsu-chan."

Ishida finally interrupts, his voice as pleasant and genial as always. "Katsu-kun, a word." He nods at Ikari. "We'll just be a moment."

Kakashi thinks it is irritation that flashes through his veins in a momentary rush of heat similar to poison. (Like that mission with one of his earlier teams - which one, he cannot remember, but he remembers the Rock chuunin who threw poisoned senbon with delicate, polished fingers.) He follows Ishida out of the fairly busy lounge anyway.

As soon as they are out of sight and earshot, Ishida whirls around and slams him against the nearest wall.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he hisses. "Didn't Ling tell you not to go near him?"

(This is the wild card that is Ishida which made Kakashi recalculate his chances of success after their first meeting. This is danger and anger and unpredictability, and this is where Kakashi will find out if he has been too good of an actor, too good of a lie.)

Kakashi looks up at the man through his lashes and answers innocently, "My memory might be jogged if you hit me."

Ishida snorts and looks away as he loosens his grip on Kakashi's shoulders, not seeming amused.

"You might like the pain, Katsu, but this man has killed seven of my boys. I've let him return because he's a loyal customer with a lot of power that didn't make the fight worth it, but I draw the line at you."

Kakashi blinks, genuinely unsettled. (Yes, he has been too good of a lie. He has been too good of a fuck and too good of a whore and too good of an endearing kid - but he has always been a genius, yes?) "I...don't know what to say to that, Ishida-sama. I'm that good?"

Ishida's face - flickers with anger? And then shutters for a moment before returning to relaxed amiability. There is a faint smirk stretching his fine mouth as he says, "Katsu-kun, if you were female, I'd have you trained as a courtesan and sent to the daimyo."

"Oh."

"Yes. And that's why you're going to make your excuses to - what did he tell you to call him? Oh, yes. _Kami._"

Katsu laughs, rapidly recalculating. "Yes, that was a very horrible line, but I really think it'd be worth it. He seems like he'd be a good fuck, and you've been the only interesting one around lately." And the tool he has never used before: the pout. "Please? As a favor to me? You've been planning on setting limits on him anyway, right?"

Ishida's eyes are stony - except they aren't. They're stuck on his pouting lips and a little unfocused.

And then he snaps out of it, looking rather unnerved. He releases Kakashi altogether and takes a step back, suddenly unreadable in his distance. He stares at Kakashi thoughtfully for a minute.

Kakashi doesn't say a word.

Then: "You're dangerous enough in your own right, aren't you."

It isn't a question.

Silence between them (old silence with words in it, like the kind in the empty house of his blood) -

Ishida turns and begins walking away, but Kakashi hears the man's words clearly all the same. "Find someone else. I'll make your excuses to Kami."

Kakashi doesn't pretend like he understands whatever has just happened - he dismisses it from his mind and it is a final dismissal.

So he has reformulated his plan already, already is sure that this will work (but if it doesn't he still will not fail; failure is incomprehensible). _This will work_, and dismissal is the only farewell Ishida will receive.

Katsu straightens and steps away from the wall. He grins brightly and impishly and mysteriously and walks back into the lounge to find another trick.

* * *

It is three hours later and Kakashi is moaning vigorously and falsely as his awkward customer fucks him. The man has too much stamina and not enough imagination, and Kakashi is bored.

It strikes him as he listens to the sound of the man's balls slapping his ass that he doesn't actually need to do this. He doesn't need to produce another satisfied customer - _he doesn't need to uphold his cover anymore_.

It is a strange thought, and Kakashi -

Can barely fathom such a thing.

It is because he can barely fathom such a thing that he emits a particularly loud moan, leans his head back as if to kiss the man, raises his left hand as if to hold the man's face in place, and breaks the man's neck with a quick, hard twist.

The corpse collapses on top of him, knocking the breath out of Kakashi's lungs in a whoosh. A slight moan breaks the silence as the changed position finally allows the inept (dead) man to hit Kakashi's prostate.

This is perhaps ironic, but Kakashi simply removes the penis from his person, wiggles out from under the corpse, and reaches for his kimono.

He does not bother with all of the elaborate layers and folds and ritual, simply tying it loosely. He has a mission and a target susceptible to the beauty of his body.

* * *

Kakashi heads directly to the specially equipped suites - the ones reserved for the more unconventional customers. No one looks at him twice in the halls, too drunk and engrossed in the pretty, upturned face of whichever of Ishida's boys they have an arm slung around. There are a few catcalls, but Katsu simply smiles politely and disinterestedly and continues walking with an air of business about him.

He doesn't run into Ling or Ishida. This is fortunate. He knows he is safe when he reaches the bondage wing.

Sado-masochism is neither Ling's nor Ishida's kink, and Kakashi is safe.

(Here is the incongruence of life: Kakashi is about to offer himself up to be raped and possibly killed in order to get a chance to kill a man, and he sees this as safe. Here is an example of his skewed priorities, of how he is nothing more or less than shinobi: Kakashi sees safety in terms of his mission's success.

This is such a moot fucking point. It is not even worth being spelled out - it is a basic tenet of his being, and -

Nothing. Moot. Fucking moot fucking point.)

So he opens the first door he comes to and immediately knows he has chosen the wrong room - an aesthetically pleasing redheaded boy a couple of years younger than Kakashi is strapped face-down to a sawhorse and screaming as his customer whips the bottom of his feet. The man's raging erection seems to strain toward the child's rosy pucker that is so well displayed by his splayed legs.

Kakashi watches for a moment and thinks of nothing. (Here are the options he does not think about: he does not think about stepping in a chakra-split second to the man's side and sticking the senbon into the man's throat and _jerking _it sideways, ripping the skin and muscle roughly -

He does not think about killing the boy or setting the room on fire or even screaming.)

And then he turns his face away and lets the door fall shut on the child's screams.

The next door he opens is the one to Ikari Waya's suite. He pushes it open brazenly and leans against the door frame, head tilted back and eyes half-lidded and one pale, smooth thigh protruding from his barely-tied kimono as he watches Ikari torture one of the boys.

Ikari notices him the moment he pushes the door open, of course. His eyes light up.

"Hey, kid. I see you got out of your 'previous obligations'. What's your name again?"

Katsu smiles, slow and sharp like something knifing through the water, and lets the automatic lie fall from his lips. "I'm Katsu. Think you can please me?"

In the instant before the pain starts - when fury and challenge and violence and desire are blazing in Ikari's gaze and a small, ugly smile is curling his lips - Kakashi reflects that this is perhaps not his brightest moment.

And then _PAIN -_

* * *

**A/N:** And the seventh chapter. What do you lot think, hm?

Happy New Year, kids!


	8. Chapter 8

_Warning: the following fanfiction contains very deep wrongness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological twistedness. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please, click the back button. If slash is not your brand of vodka, then turn around immediately and don't even bother flaming._

**These Are All Things You Don't Understand**

**Chapter Eight**

_.:dedicated to my lovely wifeh, bluebimbomushi:._

* * *

Kakashi is bleeding vigorously when he half-stumbles, half-limps towards the suite's exit. A little boy's body is hanging from chains in the middle of the room where he was abandoned at Kakashi's entrance, and a vividly red smile is dripping across his throat as the least Kakashi could do for him. There is a black-haired corpse slumped in what would normally be a physically impossible contortion against a bloodied wall behind him, gray eyes glazed and half-lidded and staring at nothing. (Kakashi didn't give him enough time to be surprised.)

Most of the blood on the wall is not Ikari's. (Kakashi had wanted to spring for his throat and kill him like a dog, but Ikari was being hunted this way for a reason, and that reason was that he was actually very skilled. There was only one way to get his guard down.)

Kakashi reaches the door and makes to open it - and sees the tremor in his hand.

So instead of opening the door and leaving this room like he so wants to (with a desperation that is the strongest he has ever felt, stronger than any his little tragedies have managed to evoke in him), he closes his eyes and leans carefully against the door frame (in a way that is vaguely ironic in its painful similarity to his earlier pose) and allows himself a moment to breathe.

He feels dizzy.

There is no time for weakness.

He suddenly notices the hot blood trickling steadily down his back and has to take a moment to remember why. This new pain: ten long, precise gashes made with a beautiful dagger that Kakashi would in any other circumstances like to own.

Kakashi takes another breath and blocks out the pain and straightens. He ties his kimono tightly, grateful for the mostly dark colors of the pattern that hide the majority of the bloodstains from the casual glance. (He ignores the way the cloth sticks to his wounds, the sensation of wetness spreading through the weave.)

And then he pushes open the door.

He is walking with a forced steady and even gait through halls that are even busier and noisier than usual, rigidly making himself appear uninjured, when there is suddenly an iron grip around his right upper arm. Momentum pulls him out of the hall and into one of the many ostentatious bedrooms. Kakashi almost breaks the man's fingers out of somewhat rusty instinct, but he sees a snatch of blond hair and automatically suppresses the reflex.

Ling.

"Katsu, where the fuck have you been? One of the _fucking_ customers has just _fucking_ been found _fucking dead_!"

That would explain the unusual activity in the halls. Kakashi looks at the man, focusing on his face against the blur of colors that make up his vision. Ling's normally cheerful face is pale and pinched, and there is a wrinkle between his worried blue eyes.

He finds himself saying, "Kakashi."

Confusion darts across Ling's face at the apparent non-sequitur. "What?"

"My name. Kakashi. Not Katsu."

The blond still doesn't understand. "I - "

Kakashi doesn't understand either - he doesn't understand why he has just told an enemy his name, doesn't understand the tight feeling in his chest or the lead weight in his gut. (Kakashi doesn't understand a lot of things, for a genius.) "I'm a ninja, Ling."

Big blue eyes, filled with trust and bewilderment and something else that Ling has never vocalized but made obvious with every glance Kakashi's way. Blue eyes, and there is realization slowly creeping through them but right now they are Minato's and -

Kakashi kisses him, long and hard and passionate and without deceit.

And then he kills him.

* * *

Here is Konoha. Here is Kakashi. Here are Konoha's gates looming before Kakashi, and here is an ANBU.

The ANBU jumps from the night-blackened boughs of a tree and lands in a slight crouch. He straightens immediately -

And Kakashi glares through his lashes, too out of it to waste the energy it would take to raise his head.

"Don't" is all he says. It is pushed through dry, cracked lips with a tongue that still tastes soot and ash and in a smoke-damaged voice that sounds like leaves rustling in the fall.

He walks around one of the most dangerous ninja in Konoha. He doesn't turn around to see if death is speeding his way. When he is passing through the gates fifteen seconds later, he thinks that he must have just disrespected one of the more sane members of the corps. (Who still wouldn't be entirely sane but at least even-keeled enough not to kill him for the small insult.)

Kakashi continues to breathe evenly through the torn strip of cloth tied around his face and takes to the empty, moonlit rooftops without pausing the mechanical movement of his filthy bare feet. He does not acknowledge it, but if he stops, there is a large possibility that he will not be able to start again. Here is weakness. Here is exhaustion.

_Here is Konoha. _

* * *

He doesn't remember most of the journey to the Hokage's Tower, but the sudden cessation of chatter between the two chuunin on duty when he enters the mission room brings him back to awareness for some reason. They are staring at him with expressions that Kakashi is too bone-tired to decipher, and he holds himself together only by sheer force of will.

He does not wonder what they see. He knows. They see a barefoot kid in a tattered kimono with a rag tied around his face. There are no bloodstains trailing down his legs or decorating his hands and face because he was exceedingly careful to remove them all, ironically using the exact same stream as he did at the start of the mission. (He cleaned himself for the exact same reason he refuses to show any sign of injury in view of Konoha shinobi, which is that he does not want word getting back to Him and being forced to deal with questions he can never answer.) And then - then they notice the silver hair, the stoic eyes, and their minds register _Sakumo's son traitor's son_ as they rise to their feet.

This is him reclaiming his identity.

"Hatake Kakashi. Chuunin. Identification number four-one-eight-three-five-two-one. Reporting to the Hokage," Kakashi says clearly and formally with his new soot-ravaged voice, the words coming to him automatically. He feels like he should fall, like he should make some dramatic gesture that will get the staring numskulls to _fucking move already_, but he doesn't. He is not weak. (This is what he tells himself, and he politely and skillfully ignores the slight doubt that has sneaked inside him during the course of interminable days and stroked his synapses lovingly.)

He almost wishes he had allowed the ANBU to escort him, if only to bypass this formality.

The chuunin are still staring, mouths open, and Kakashi is abruptly sickened. He summons up the energy to glare from reserves that he does not think will last for long. They have made him stop moving, and he is truly doubting his ability to restart, especially if this farce continues for much longer.

So he glares and slowly enunciates, "I. Need. To. See. The. Hokage." _Imbeciles_ is unspoken, but the chuunin hear it and color before abruptly springing into movement and noise that Kakashi cannot bring himself to translate into words.

Kakashi orders his feet to follow one of the chuunin to the Sandaime's office and somehow manages even now not to limp.

(He is beyond recognizing the pain anymore.)

Kakashi blinks and -

Here is the Sandaime. The office is otherwise empty, and the man is rising from his seat with a strange light passing over his wrinkled face like happiness.

"Kakashi." The word is drowned with many inflections that Kakashi cannot pick out. (Disbelief. Joy. Surprise. Guilt. Joy joy joy - )

"Hokage-sama," Kakashi lips respond respectfully. He begins to bow and nearly stumbles with dizziness.

Sarutobi straightens in alarm. "Do you need a medic-nin?"

It takes all of Kakashi's willpower to admit it, but he nods through doubling vision, incapable of speech. The Sandaime immediately barks out, "Hawk!" and an ANBU appears silently beside him. "Escort - "

And Kakashi does something he never would have done before Katsu. He interrupts. He forces out, "Hokage-sama, no hospital," with a certain stillness and economy and unflappability that he has missed and doesn't feel in his failing body. "Sensei mustn't know."

The Sandaime's face is white and his thin lips are pressed together. (He is remembering that this was no ordinary mission and this is not an ordinary mission report. He is remembering that tracks must be hidden and secrets must be kept and discreet medical assistance is a priority.)

There is no need for Kakashi to say, _You promised. _

Sarutobi starts over. "Hawk, escort Medic Masai here. Have her sign a secrecy contract and - "

This is when Kakashi's ears register nothing but a vague buzzing sound as his doubling and tripling vision wavers.

A few seconds later, he blacks out.

* * *

Kakashi awakens in a room he does not recognize, but this scenario is familiar and constant so he does not tense and start searching for weapons. The first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is the ceiling, and this is familiar too. He knows ceilings intimately.

He does not move immediately. He is feeling almost relaxed and he can't feel the pain that has eaten away at his iron self-control for the past - he doesn't even know how long. Ever since -

He stops the thought dead and moves out of contrariness, just to distract himself. (Because pain is nothing. Because he has never flinched away from the inevitable.) He is prepared for aches and fire -

But there is nothing.

_There is no pain. _

There is no terrible heat in his back from infected cuts, no horrible agony in the base of his spine, no constant wave of ice-knife pain emanating from his feet, no difficulty breathing through the smoke damage to his lungs.

He sits up carefully and there is still no pain. His throat tightens and his eyes blur for some curious reason. He blinks and the alien sensation is gone.

Hatake Kakashi takes a deep breath and stands. His gaze falls to a chair beside the bed he has been given.

His uniform. His hitai-ate. His right hand flies to his face -

He is wearing his mask - one of the masks he has had for years, something he realizes now he has missed so much. This means someone has seen his face, but Kakashi doesn't care at the moment because _he is wearing his mask_.

He is really in Konoha.

This is a realization that would stagger anyone else in his position. He simply nods at it gratefully with closed eyes and lets the magnitude of it roll off his back.

He reaches for his uniform with sure, still hands - but his right hovers over the hitai-ate on top of the pile for a minute before he grabs the clothes instead. He dons them slowly, tying ties and buckling buckles with movements that are foreign to him now.

When he is finished, he sits on the bed and stares at the hitai-ate still lying on the chair.

Five minutes later, the chair is empty and so is the room.

* * *

He exits the room and finds himself in the Sandaime's office again.

The Sandaime is standing at the window, staring out at a moonlit Konoha. Kakashi does not say a word or take another step, but Sarutobi speaks anyway.

"You arrived at three in the morning two nights ago. You've been unconscious the whole time. Medic Masai has seen to your injuries. You will go to the hospital and meet with her so that the proper false reports can be filed and your stories synced."

But Kakashi is still silent and tense. Sarutobi turns to face him with a sigh.

"No, Minato does not know you're back yet. Luckily, you arrived late enough that no one saw you except ANBU patrol and Hatori-kun and Nobu-kun. They are under orders to say nothing to anyone. I will notify Minato of your arrival when you leave this office."

Kakashi's shoulders relax. Sarutobi walks calmly to his desk and sits. There is an empty chair in front of it. The old man motions for Kakashi to sit in it. He does.

Kakashi is placid and cool and does not flinch when he meets the Hokage's dark, unreadable eyes squarely and begins to speak. "Hatake Kakashi. Chuunin. Identification number four-one-eight-three-five-two-one. Mission accomplished."

"Report, shinobi."

* * *

Kakashi talks for only a few minutes before the Sandaime stops him. He calls for ANBU to bring tea and dismisses his detail.

The ANBU guard protests. "Sir - "

Sarutobi does not even look at him. "Go. I want no one within fifty yards of this office."

"Sir, I really advise - "

And now the Sandaime does look at him. The ANBU flinches.

"Yes, sir."

The ninja disappears without sign of jutsu, and Kakashi notes detachedly that the man is very quick. The Sandaime's fingers move lightning-fast through one jutsu and then another, and Kakashi feels privacy and proximity wards encircling the office for thirty yards in every direction. He doubts that birds will be able to fly into it without being repelled.

The Hokage hands Kakashi a cup of tea and says, "Continue."

Sarutobi's own tea sits untouched on his desk and cools.

Kakashi talks for hours.

When he finally stops speaking, the sun has been up, stretched out, and gotten a light breakfast. The Hokage stares at his desktop for several minutes before exhaling a ragged breath, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, and looking at Kakashi again.

Kakashi doesn't know a lot of things for a genius. He doesn't know how to reassure burdened men or how to blunt the razor that is his blank stare running fine, thin lines down Sarutobi's ribcage in a vivisection.

Sarutobi looks away first. And then he says, "You will write a mission report detailing your S-class mission to assassinate a ROOT missing-nin known only as Hayato. He does not exist, so feel free to make up whatever you like. The report will be marked as highly classified - accessible to the Hokage only - and I give you permission to use my name if questioned by your teammates."

Kakashi's throat is sore from speaking for so long. He stares at his leader and doesn't understand. Therefore he does something else he never would have done before Katsu: he questions. "...Why, Hokage-sama?" _Why are you going so far? Why have you been so thorough? Why do you have difficulty looking me in the eye?  
_

The Sandaime suddenly stands and walks over to the window again. He places a hand against the glass and doesn't answer for several minutes. When he does, he says, "Kakashi, I don't know how to explain it to you. Suffice to say that I am keeping my promise." His voice is very tired and filled with something that Kakashi cannot recognize. "You are dismissed." (He doesn't know how to explain because he recognizes now the enormity of exactly how much they have failed the boy - how much Kakashi's head has been fucked with, exactly how few of their society's unquestionable facts have been imparted to the young genius. He doesn't know how to explain and he doesn't even know how to try - so he doesn't, failing the boy all over again and knowing it.)

"Sir." Kakashi stands and bows and steps with quick, only slightly stiff movements (that are such a relief) to the heavy doors. He feels the wards come down.

His hand is inches away from the handle when the Sandaime speaks again. "Welcome back home, Kakashi."

Kakashi does not understand the concept of home, but he nods even though he knows that Sarutobi is not looking at him and says, "Thank you, sir," before leaving.

* * *

He makes his way to the hospital after leaving the Hokage's Tower. The receptionist calls Masai to the front for him, and the medic-nin smiles politely when she sees him.

"And you are?"

Without missing a beat: "Hatake Kakashi, ma'am. The Hokage sent me."

"Oh, yes. He wanted to make sure you'd actually get yourself checked out. Right this way, then, and we'll begin. The Sandaime mentioned that you hate hospitals, so I'll make this as quick as possible, but if you need to stay overnight, you're staying overnight, got that?"

Kakashi nods and follows the bustling woman mechanically. He is tired now from the short journey here, which is irritating and galling and pathetic.

When the door to the check-up room swings shut behind them, the woman's smile drops.

"Right," she says grimly. "Any lingering aches and pains?"

"No."

She tsks and lets loose a diagnostics jutsu. "Well, everything looks okay, but you really are staying here for at least one night. Your body is weak from strain and exhaustion, despite being healed. Some things are only cured by bed rest. Your chakra was almost nonexistent when I first healed you, and it hasn't regenerated fully."

Which explains why he is tired again so soon after a two-day nap. He doesn't say anything, though he nods grudgingly after a few moments of her looking at him expectantly.

"Good! Then you wait here. I'll send in a nurse to - "

And then a blur of yellow bursts into the room, making the woman jump - it is the Yellow Flash in all of his glory, his hair windswept and wearing a smile so broad that his bright blue eyes are almost closed.

"Kakashi! You're finally back!"

Kakashi finds himself wrapped in an embrace that threatens his ribs with its strength. It is like being hugged by a mountain (or how he would imagine such a thing would be if he was ever to be so fanciful). He immediately relaxes into it as his training has taught him to.

_He immediately relaxes into it as his training has taught him to. _

Kakashi realizes what he has done a moment later, and he tenses for a millisecond at the implications.

But just this once -

He relaxes again before Sensei (he cannot allow himself to call the man by name anymore even in his thoughts and subconscious, too intimate and personal and tempting and _he cannot allow himself - _) notices. The man is babbling something into his hair, squeezing him impossibly tighter and rocking them both back and forth.

Just this once.

* * *

**A/N:** You love me.


	9. Chapter 9

_Warning: the following fanfiction contains very deep wrongness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological twistedness. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please, click the back button. If slash is not your brand of vodka, then turn around immediately and don't even bother flaming._

**These Are All Things You Don't Understand**

**Chapter Nine**

**

* * *

  
**

Kakashi allows the embrace only for another half-minute. (Any longer might threaten his control, and he doesn't like to admit it but he knows it is true.) He counts down the seconds, his eyes closed and his face pressed into the Yellow Flash's shoulder as he memorizes the feel and the smell and the absolute peace these blunt fingers digging into his skin bring along with broken veins and growing blue smears under flesh -

And now the thirty seconds are up; he rolls back his shoulders in a silent request to be released. Sensei immediately breaks off his stream of almost incomprehensible words that Kakashi has not bothered to try to decipher (lie lie lie - Kakashi is a liar to himself and the world. These are the words that he will set gently in a corner of his mind and wall off carefully, brick by brick, so that he will never talk himself into pursuing the man: _I missed you I was so worried I came as soon as I heard I can't believe you landed yourself in the hospital are you alright can I do anything for you - _) and lets Kakashi go.

He feels almost dizzy in the clarity of this. The medic has left the room, thankfully, and Kakashi doesn't have to kill her for witnessing this private moment.

Kakashi lies again by telling himself that the loss of the man's arms around him does not feel like a limb has been torn away - tells himself that he cannot still feel the phantom warmth and comfort and strength.

The Yellow Flash is the first to speak, as always. Kakashi falls into their familiar old habits as if they are oxygen and he has been drowning. (He feels like Kakashi again, almost - he has been Katsu for so long that he is having trouble finding the distinction between them, too used to acting one way and thinking another. He believes he managed to fool the Hokage, but the awkward conflict is still there, manifest in split-second pauses before reactions and speech, and it is so good to see his mentor again.)

The first thing the jounin says when he gets a good look at Kakashi is: "You're so skinny! I didn't hurt anything except your pride with the hug, did I?"

"...No, Sensei."

But the man's protective instincts have been roused by Kakashi's pause, and he immediately starts checking Kakashi over. Kakashi allows it for a moment before calmly grabbing his teacher's fluttering hands by the wrists and guiding him to a nearby chair.

The Yellow Flash cooperates from the shock of the uninitiated contact alone. He stares at Kakashi and is suddenly calm and analytical, blue eyes sharp and calculating and back to baseline.

"Sit," the man says. "And tell me about the mission."

Kakashi complies, dropping into a surprisingly comfortable chair next to his sensei. He is glad to obey, wearied already (and that is _so incredibly irritating_. He wants his old fitness and strength back). "What do you want me to say?"

Blue eyes scan him. "Start with what took you so long. You've been gone for over two months, Kakashi."

(It felt like two decades, and it is hard for his body not to betray the overwhelming - it is some kind of emotion that surges through every cell of himself at the sound of his name from the jounin's mouth.)

Calmly and without hesitation: "The mission required tracking and careful preparation before engagement. The target was rarely in a vulnerable position, and the opportunity to eliminate him did not arise for some time."

"He must have been a dangerous mark."

"Yes."

"We'll talk about that later then. Injuries?"

"Nothing serious. A few bruises and scratches. The medic-nin says I am suffering from extreme exhaustion." (And this is a lie, but Kakashi can live with lies. Obviously.)

"That explains why you look like shit," the man teases with a blinding grin, switching moods as erratically as always.

"Sensei," Kakashi says reprovingly, and everything is _so goddamned normal_ that an alien feeling tightens his throat.

His teacher grins again and ruffles his hair. "I've missed you."

Kakashi nods, not trusting himself to speak. The blond sighs happily and lays his arm across the back of Kakashi's chair; comfortable silence falls between them.

It comes when Kakashi doesn't expect it: "I'm very proud of you, Kakashi."

Kakashi lets his eyes crinkle very slightly in a tiny smile and doesn't say anything. (The silence is for Sensei, because people break too easily. It is for Kakashi himself because this mission couldn't break him, but he knows, starting deep in a place that he is not aware of and spreading through his entire being as undeniable fact, that Sensei's full knowledge of it just might.)

But now the man is grinning back at him, delighted with the small show of emotion (emotions are a weakness), and so Kakashi finally replies, "It was nothing, Sensei."

He lies because he knows he is good at it - because he has discovered that he is a good liar and a good lie and a good fuck and a good whore and a good actor and a good shinobi. He lies because people break too easily and there are secrets that can never be spoken of outside of Sarutobi's office. He lies because the man lounging in the chair beside him is one whose entire being necessitates it. He lies because he is selfish. He looks the Yellow Flash (not Minato anymore, never again) in the eye and lies and doesn't regret it and never will.

* * *

Eight hours pass, and Kakashi sleeps.

He dreams.

When he wakes, he is hard and slightly flushed and still trapped in the frozen mental image of damp yellow hair brushing against a sweat-gleaming left shoulder that is decorated with a two-second old bite mark, dark and red against tan skin. Kakashi's body is burning with arousal, twisting in his chest and pooling in his gut and making it hard to breathe normally -

And now he notices the head of blond hair pillowed on tan arms that is half-on his bed, three inches from his left pinky finger, and what twists in his chest -

It is -

Wrongness. Guilt. Resignation. Tragedy and agony and a moment of -

(Hatake Kakashi cannot recognize four components of this pre-dawn drowning.)

* * *

He leaves the hospital two days later. He sneaks out while doing it because there is a very mutually exclusive conflict of interests: the Yellow Flash is ecstatic Kakashi is back and seems unwilling to let him go out of sight range. The man has been constantly underfoot, like a big blond puppy. Before the mission, Kakashi would have been quietly pleased with this. Now - now he is tense and uncomfortable and incapable of expressing it without also having to explain exactly _why _he wants his teacher to stop touching him and grinning at him and falling asleep slouched in the chair by his hospital bed and _looking at him like that._

Kakashi is too aware of things that are the farthest thoughts from the other man's mind.

But Kakashi has said no, and he meant it. He has said no to even trying to make his mentor look at him that way. He has said no to pain and unachievable goals and becoming human in the way that matters. He has said no to pursuing Mi- _fuck. _To pursuing his sensei.

So this is Kakashi going to his family home.

The reason for this is that he knows the man won't even think to check for him at the old Hatake house. (The civilian kids always run when they have to pass the small compound because they think it is haunted. Kakashi - if he ever discovered this and felt that speaking of such important things did not devalue them - could tell the children a story that would at first interest and then intrigue and then break away a few shards of idealism as it peels off of hearts in the silence that follows.) Kakashi -

He needs some space - just a few hours to gather himself, to try to fix whatever is malfunctioning in his brain because he is different now (he knows this with the surety of the color of blood), and it isn't going away on its own like he had secretly half-thought it would. _Just a few hours - _

And here.

Here is the house Sakumo bought sixteen years ago when he was seventeen and immortal and strong and successful, darling of the Leaf and freshly dubbed the White Fang of Konohagakure. Kakashi does not look at the abode that was once his father's (his family's) as he makes his way through the old wards and traps to the stone wall of the courtyard. He does not want to see the lewd harshness of the peeling plaster or the -

He doesn't want to see it. That's all that matters.

Kakashi does not hate his father's house, but that is only because emotion is a weakness and he is not weak.

Oh. Oh, wait, no no no. The tense must be corrected. He _wasn't _weak. That is why he is here, isn't it? He has come to think, to return to the Hatake Kakashi of a few months ago.

(Here is a half-considered thought made ironic and therefore worthy of mention by breezed-by, intrinsic factuality: _Maybe it is the house. Maybe there has been some sort of fearsomely brilliant jutsu whispered into the woodwork - maybe he has been acting under its influence his whole life and it is only just now wearing off_. Isn't that ironic? Isn't that hilarious? Look at the scrabbling, desperate, last-pitch attempt to rationalize, the increasing internal fear and lack of understanding made obvious and tangible with every succeeding word, and agree that it is abso-fucking-lutely sidesplitting.)

He is going to pry this enormous, uncontrollable _want_ out of his ribcage and the spaces between the vertebrae that make up his spinal cord. He is going to delete even any small twitch that was birthed in Ishida's warehouse or brothel from the muscle memory of his shoulder blades.

He doesn't - he doesn't understand a lot of things, things too numerous to list. Relevant to this moment: all experiences affect the personality. Relevant to this moment: there is no _picking and choosing_ which happenings and environments and thoughts and actions and reactions integrate into his clever clever clever brain. Relevant to this moment: change cannot be politely refused. (Kakashi is a creature of habit and belief - his mentality has not changed in ever, and this persistent uncertainty in his actions and thoughts is slowly beginning to frighten him.)

He doesn't understand. He was never taught how to. All he knows is that he doesn't want to be in love with the Yellow Flash for the rest of his life. (This is his father's failing - but wait. Wait. That will come later.)

Kakashi slides the door open and steps inside the house of his blood.

The building is too big. There are twenty-two rooms all told, and Kakashi slowly walks through them, bare feet leaving tracks in the dust. (There were no house slippers in the entryway - this is no home in any sense of the word.)

Six of the rooms are boarded up, the first five by Sakumo's hand when - well. (He won't think about this now.) Kakashi did the last one himself when he was eight, very carefully and exactingly and calmly hammering the nails through. He'd had to fetch a chair to reach the lintel and finish.

He remembers this as he stands in front of the study. His father's study. He stands in front of his father's suicide room and stares at the pine planks affixed across the doorway. They don't smell like he remembers. (Kakashi stayed in this house for eleven months after Sakumo gutted himself. He used to stand where he is now and stare at the too-precise barricade for hours, memorizing every whorl and pit in the wood. He knew the sight better than his own face - better than Sakumo's face as well, but that isn't saying much.) It has been two years since he left the house of his father's blood, and the fresh pine scent faded while he was unable to mark its passing.

Not that it matters.

He rips down the planks and steps inside.

See: a dark stain mapping out the hardwood floor, stretching from the farthest left corner to half a foot into the formerly magnificent oriental rug in the middle of the study. The blood has long since seeped into the grain of the wood. Note the odd effect the layer of dust has on the color, giving it the fashionable rusted-steel hue.

See: the beautiful antique desk that makes Kakashi flinch (because it looks so similar to Ishida's and he had forgotten - _he had forgotten what Sakumo's desk looked like_).

See: a library, scrolls of hundreds of jutsu resting innocently in their slots.

See: the room where Kakashi taught himself to read and write - where he slept if Sakumo was on a mission until he turned four and entered the academy.

See: the useless, empty study of Hatake Sakumo, failure.

And now Kakashi is suddenly and completely -

Something. He is suddenly and completely something he cannot name. It is burning in the tips of his fingers and blazing in the pit of his stomach and resurrecting all of the blood-breaking words he has swallowed like they were sustenance, firmly and naturally and daily weekly always.

Sakumo is years dead and was nothing but a fucking failure anyway - Kakashi knows that he won't turn into the same. He doesn't need to swear it.

In this overwhelming conflagration, he doesn't know why he even considered this too-big house of failure and shame and blood and weakness to be a good place to think.

And now - his lungs feel like they are stiffening into cardboard, and his mouth is dry and his throat tight with words he first swallowed five years ago. His fingers have curled into fists without him noticing. The thick heat in his gut has somehow compacted itself into - it is like the sun has been plucked from the sky and shoved down his esophagus, only the sun is too big so all the fire and fuel has been squeezed into a ball the size of the Yellow Flash's fist, every particle a thousand times concentrated to make up for the size-down.

He - it is so difficult to breathe. He can only take in short breaths with his new cardboard lungs, and his exhalations are quick and harsh. He is practically panting, he realizes distantly, but he cannot do anything about this senselessness because now the incredible, almost-familiar heat has found its way into his cranium and his fists are tingling and his teeth are clenched, air whistling through them like a song that isn't as driving as the pulse he can feel in his ears -

His vision goes red and hazy, and -

There is a moment of movement and air and timelessness - and the sound of wood shattering.

Kakashi stares down at the splintered fragments of his father's desk.

He leaves and very stoically does not want to burn this showplace of decay to ashes.

* * *

Kakashi fails at a lot of things, the necessary, important, human things that matter.

He didn't used to realize this deficiency. Now that he is back, however, he sees it in the number of people he knows by name (nine) and the people who expect to see him smile (none) and the recognition in his landlord's eyes (again, none).

And he - he is too used to talking and interacting now. He is too used to pretending to be social and a little naive and determined and amusingly stubborn and entertaining and sexual and - all the things he isn't. He is too used to pretending to be Katsu.

He isn't allowed to be Katsu anymore, not by his peers or superiors and least of all by himself.

He tells himself that he isn't tempted by it.

He manages to avoid the Yellow Flash for the entire afternoon after leaving his old house. And then a night passes, a night spent sleeping in a tree at Training Ground Thirty-Two because seeing his landlord and his dusty, barren flat made him want to puke - and he wakes with the dawn's light stretching through the branches to caress his hair.

It is a miracle that the jounin hasn't managed to track him down yet. Except: not a miracle. Kakashi doesn't believe in the divine - can't even comprehend such a concept. (One of the village's failings in Kakashi's raising is that they never taught him to accept blind faith. Then again: look at Namikaze Minato and look at Hatake Kakashi and try to say that some measures of blind faith aren't innate.)

Noon comes, and for no reason at all Kakashi finds himself back at his flat for the second time since his return.

Here is Kakashi. Waiting.

He doesn't have to wait long.

(The Yellow Flash will always find him. Except when he can't - except for the time that will come when even their too-precious people will die screaming because there isn't time and he has to _choose_, dammit, and _there isn't time_. Choices. Choices and time and time and choices.)

* * *

Kakashi manages to avoid the in-depth conversation about the mission for another two days.

Two days, and this is the promised later - this is the Yellow Flash smiling quietly at him while stirring an almost-empty tea cup absently. The words that have passed between them are so shriveled and devaluing and -

They just aren't enough. Kakashi feels like his lungs can't do anything with the oxygen they continue to take in steadily even as the blond asks casual questions (casual - because Ikari had just been another mission, the only the slight interest factor being its status as Kakashi's first solo assassination) and Kakashi either exhales half-truths or waves them off. Insignificance and wrongness and falsity are so stiff in his blood and his mouth that he wants to affect his environment in a screaming, decimate-the-building way.

But he is Hatake Kakashi, chuunin, and even the Yellow Flash sees nothing amiss in the set of his jaw and the evenness of his gaze.

The casual interrogation peters off smoothly, and now his jounin leader begins chattering about petty happenings that occurred during Kakashi's absence from Konoha. Kakashi sits through it stolidly and occasionally murmurs a response to words he does not hear. He concentrates instead on not staring at the small freckle next to the Yellow Flash's mouth - very carefully does not watch the fascinating gaping of the neckline of the man's undershirt, which flashes an extremely bitable collarbone with every over-exaggerated arm-waving.

He really wishes the Yellow Flash was less - everything that has claimed Kakashi's heart. (Things that he can't put into words. Things that break him and remake him and save him and destroy him.)

It is a few hours before the man makes to leave.

"So I'll see you when I come by tomorrow afternoon. Don't forget to eat that sashimi I brought - actually, maybe I'll just stay for a bit longer. You're too thin, Kakashi - "

And if the jounin thinks this will successfully distract Kakashi, then he is a lot more delusional than Kakashi has previously believed. "I'll see you in the morning."

The babble screeches to a halt, another ploy failed, and the blond half-frowns at him. "Listen, you need more rest - "

"Don't" is what leaps quietly from Kakashi's lips. Now: "Don't...don't do that."

The silence is tense and awkward and heavy for all of two seconds before the Yellow Flash suddenly laughs. (It is very skillfully done. Watch a craftsman at work.)

Now, self-deprecatingly: "I'm acting like a mom, huh?"

That isn't the problem - Kakashi isn't too sure what a mom acts like - but he isn't going to correct the man. He simply looks at him instead. (But not really. Kakashi can't stand to truly look at the man. Not anymore. That is asking too much.) "I'll see you in the morning," he repeats, and when he sees the slight wariness in his teacher's eyes, he tries for a tentative smile. (He is trying to make it so that smiles don't only belong to Katsu. It is difficult.)

The complete joy that sweeps visibly through the Yellow Flash's body language brings a terrible tightening in Kakashi's throat. The man is an onslaught of brilliance in this glimmering second, all bright white coat and sunny hair and a glowing, quiet smile that fills Kakashi to the brim with devastating want.

The moment stretches too far, though, too intimately for Kakashi to stand, and he breaks it by wrenching his gaze away. He stares at the spiderweb in the corner and wants to close his eyes. He needs to clean, he notes.

This is the bare bones of it: he looks anywhere that does not involve his teacher.

There is a shaken silence that the Yellow Flash doesn't know what to do with. When he says, "I - um. I'm - going," Kakashi knows the man is rattled. He doesn't know why. He also doesn't know what to do about it.

So he just nods, still looking past the blond's shoulder at the spiderweb. He doesn't see the jounin gather himself for one last try at their brand of normalcy.

The Yellow Flash shrugs into a grin (because it is almost his default expression) and is suddenly a hair's breadth from Kakashi.

"See you in the morning," the man says.

Kakashi: breathless and scorched and dizzy from the proximity - and now the jounin does a half-hug, half-hair ruffling maneuver. Kakashi cannot keep from flinching away from it.

He is numb to the familiar hurt in his mentor's baby blues. He tells himself there is no fear that he has finally managed to push the man away. (That this time is the last time - that maybe this two hundred and seventy-third distance is the one that will finally make the man give up. It is for Sensei, because people break too easily. It is for himself because he thinks, somewhere -

Just. People break too easily.)

The door clicks shut, and Kakashi comes back to himself.

He walks calmly. He walks calmly calmly calmly to the toilet and vomits until only acid is left. He curls up on the floor when he is finished, flushed right cheek and forehead pressed to the cool tile, and wonders distantly when his life became a masterpiece of secrets and lies.

He doesn't eat the sashimi.

* * *

**A/N: **...Feedback is grand.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** Yeah. So this took a long time. I'd like to thank everyone for their patience - and especially for the excellent feedback that kept coming even through the wait. This chapter just wouldn't end. Mad props go out to **Wildhawk** and **a nameless lurker**, who both noticed that "the two hundred and seventy-third distance" didn't rise though the line was repeated. Wildhawk even knew the reason, which is that the Celsius temperature spectrum is 273 degrees. She also knew a cooler reason that I wish I could claim. Way to be awesome, guys.

Oh, and I've gotten a few questions about when this story will end. My response? I have no effing clue. But it will be fairly obvious and I'll make sure to shift TAATYDU's status to "complete".

And now on to the story! XD

* * *

_Warning: The following fanfiction contains very extreme darkness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological mindfuckery. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please click the back button._

**These Are All Things You Don't Understand**

**Chapter Ten**

* * *

The next day is surreal. (Remember this word. _Surreal_. It is such an incredibly fitting description, such a beautifully exact label, and it will show up again.)

Kakashi makes his way to the bridge to meet his team precisely a half hour early. He has not really slept, only dozed lucidly. There is a forty-two percent chance that it shows. (Yes. Yes, it does. When a body is beaten and abused and used and pushed for so hard and so long, small signs make themselves noticed despite all effort.)

Rin arrives after ten minutes. She is reading a scroll on iijutsu, and she doesn't notice him at first. Then she does, and her eyes go wide and her tattooed face lights up and -

Kakashi has never thought much of the girl, but it is strangely - something stunning to realize anew how much she truly thinks of him.

"Kakashi! You're back!" She looks like she wants to tackle him, but Rin is Rin and she holds herself back at the last second. She gazes at him expectantly instead.

Kakashi doesn't know what she expects. "...Yes."

She flushes a little but soldiers on. "No, you don't get it. You're _back_."

They look at each other, not connecting and not communicating, and now is when the Yellow Flash shows up, full of vim and energy. Kakashi puts the odd exchange in the back of his mind to mull over later and concentrates on not watching the jounin.

Kakashi is - just -

An idiot.

Here. Quickly. Here is what - she is talking about. What he didn't get. What she didn't have the words for:

It is half a day after Kakashi tells them he is being sent on a mission - around nine o'clock in the evening, and Rin is playing with her baby brother in the quiet comfort of her bedroom when there is a gust of wind and a crack of light and -

Minato-sensei.

Otouto begins crying in shock three blinks late, but the man doesn't seem to notice. Rin simply half-gapes.

"...Sen - "

"Have you seen Kakashi?" is what he cuts her off with, not seeming to hear her almost-stutter. His eyes are a shimmer wild and his mouth is a pale line pulled taut (like when we fished in the creek, the stupid little girl finds herself thinking numbly).

She shakes her head dumbly in response, trying to find her center (because her team life and her home life don't mix - have never mixed; no one in her family bothers with her or expects her to actually bring honor to the family name - and here is Rin caught flat-footed).

But Minato-sensei is gone before her tongue knows what to say ask demand, and she spends the next two hours after calming baby Hiroshi telling herself not to worry or jump to conclusions. She doesn't get much sleep.

When morning comes, she ends up at the bridge an hour early. Half again later, Obito shows up, panting and babbling excuses that die a quarter born and astonished.

They count the minutes for an hour, then a fresh slate with five ten twe -

And the Yellow Flash is suddenly in front of them. (She wonders if this is in the process of becoming a habit of his.) He doesn't look at her. Obito is an eruption of noise and gleeful recriminations that fade in the face of a reality neither he nor Rin have seen before.

Namikaze Minato, furious and silent and white-faced. His jaw is a harsh sweep of iron, his eyes made jarring with half-webs of red, and he seems to be staring at nothing. He certainly does not look at them.

He says, "Training is canceled for the day."

"What!" Obito yelps. "We've been waiting here for nothing?! That's such bullshit! The first time that asshole doesn't show up, you cancel?"

Minato-sensei's fingers are lax, not fisted, but Rin watches them tremble and twitch. There is a slow, curling heaviness in the air that makes it hard to breathe, hard to move, and Rin tastes it densely in the fibers of her useless muscles. Minato-sensei's hair seems to crackle with it, and Rin knows that she is nothing, wants to fold in and die - and her knees are giving out -

Instantly the weight is gone, sucked back in and saved for later. Sensei has caught her by the arm, is steadying her gently, and he is normal again. Tired, maybe -

- _His eyes meet hers._

Rin doesn't register what he says to Obito, though she distantly sees his mouth moving.

And he isn't touching her anymore because he has left. She does not fall, somehow. Somehow, she manages to stay on her feet, to appear normal, and Obito is acting normally as well. She wants to scream and know if this has all been real, to check that she is awake and she has felt what she has felt and has seen in that stranger's gaze what she has seen.

As she mechanically walks away from Obito, not hearing his squawks of indignation or seeing the slump of his shoulders, she wonders if she has ever honestly known Minato-sensei. She wonders if Kakashi has.

Rin wonders a lot of things. She doesn't understand a lot of things.

She doesn't go home or to the hospital to wheedle some training out of the medics. Instead, she goes to an empty training ground and begins fumblingly practicing a kata. (Taijutsu is her weak point, and she - she just... Disregarded weaknesses matter now.)

* * *

And here is three months later again. Here is now again. Here is Team Seven again, united again, together again (but only in the physical sense, because when have they ever genuinely understood each other?).

Obito is exactly forty-eight minutes late. Completely involved in not watching the Yellow Flash, Kakashi ignores him.

That is why the fist that flies his way actually connects.

(This is the real reason, the reason no one here on this bridge even knows exists: Kakashi is now used to not reacting, to not stopping anyone from hurting him. His body disregards such things automatically because Kakashi either does things totally or not at all and in order to - _do_, he almost completely killed his reflexes. A slip-up would have been too disastrous, and -

Why justify it?)

Obito stares at the masked face he has just punched, goggled eyes bewildered and shocked and mouth soft with surprise. No hint of triumph has fought its way through the disbelief. Rin stares as well, aghast, and the Yellow Flash just watches them, all unreadable face and eyes like lakes on windless days (water and sky reflecting a thousand times blue, glorious surface as still as glass).

Kakashi stares back, barely feeling the throb of his right brow and eye socket and cheekbone - and some part of him analyzes the extremely thorough angle Obito pulled off. The rest of him: there is a blankness in his chest and feather-lightness in his blood that he thinks is a welcome change from the chaos of conflict he has recently become.

He - smiles a little. (Is slightly delirious and weightless and lost in nothing that he understands. Is coming apart at the seams because the ties that bind have been cut or maybe were just never properly knotted in the first place.) Says, "Good to see you too, Uchiha."

He is different now (he knows this with the surety of the color of blood), and it isn't going away on its own.

* * *

So this day is surreal. Awkward silence leads to Sensei setting them to sparring, but it is only an hour before the Yellow Flash claps his hands. Kakashi immediately stops his barrage on Obito and turns to the blond, forcing himself to breathe perfectly levelly. (Kakashi sees the slight signs of _something is wrong here and i know it now _that are evident in the man's half-lidded eyes, in the subtly tighter draw of the right corner of his mouth as he smiles. There is a clenching in Kakashi's gut and a too-clearness in his vision at this development, but he does not acknowledge these physical trivialities - or the way his body feels infuriatingly weak, his breath too short. This is another thing he does not acknowledge: that he knows the jounin so well as to clue in on the man's tells, tells that even the Hyuuga have not caught.)

Kakashi is glad for his mask as he regains his equilibrium - he is almost certain that his cheeks are flushed from overexertion (when he should not be overexerted or even exerted at all) beneath it.

The Yellow Flash is saying, " - So we'll hit up the center for a mission next week. Until then, I want you training extra on your own time. _Responsibly_, might I add." A dry glance is aimed Obito's way. "With Kakashi's absence, I expect that your teamwork has gotten even worse than usual - " and here Rin sighs - "and if you don't fix it yourselves, I'll fix it for you." _You don't want that _squats thickly in their brains as the unspoken message.

Obito slumps. Kakashi betrays nothing. (He cannot shake the utter - and here is the word again - surreality of being here. Being in Konoha. Being with - him. Being attacked by Obito and confused by Rin. Being a shinobi. Being Hatake Kakashi.)

Rin speaks up. "Can you show me last Tuesday's kata?"

"Sure. But - hm. Okay, scratch that. Obito, I want you to show Rin the kata."

An expression flashes across Obito's face, gone in an instant but sending up flags in a corner of Kakashi's head. It is - dread? and joy and - ?

Strange.

"No problem, mister-master-teacher-man-dude," is all Obito says, blithe and obnoxious and normal again. Rin looks like she wants to protest, but of course she would never so vocally doubt her sensei.

The Yellow Flash just nods, either adjusted to or ignoring the moniker (that Kakashi has never heard before, and what is the story?). "Go on, then. Wait! I forgot to mention - we're meeting at Jinji's tonight. Seven o'clock, okay?"

"Jinji's?" Obito questions.

"Yeah. You know, it's next to - actually, why don't you just come with Rin."

Here: Kakashi speaks for the first time since his greeting to Obito, cutting off what would probably have been a colorful explosion of protests. "Why?"

The man blinks. "...Right. Right, you weren't here. We've started having semi-weekly strategy meetings. Yes, you are required to attend."

When Kakashi doesn't reply, the blond turns to his other students. "What are you waiting for? Go. Teach. Learn."

The duo heads off, one nearly bouncing and the other with a hint of long-suffering. As entertaining and painfully hilarious as it would be to watch them, Kakashi's attention is drawn to his teacher.

Who is. He is and he is looking at Kakashi.

It is a little - tense. Last night is fresh in Kakashi's mind, and he knows things aren't as they used to be between them but doesn't know how long the Yellow Flash is going to pretend otherwise - doesn't even know whether he wants the man to do so or not.

He finds himself saying, "I am unsure as to whether that was a brilliant idea or a moronic one."

Blue eyes widen a fraction - and surprised laughter lolls out lowly. "I guess we'll see. Either way, Obito takes a closer look at his own form and I can talk to you."

Cold skitters down Kakashi's spine despite having expected this since the too-quick man clapped an halt to his spar with Obito. He tries: "Sensei?"

"Don't, Kakashi. Just - don't. You're off your game. You're overextending, second-guessing your muscle memory. You're _hesitating_, which I've never seen before and freely admit is a little creepy. Your hits don't have the same strength - just. What..." The blond stop-gaps into silence, a strangely helpless cast to his features.

But he doesn't finish the question, stopping two centimeters from the ledge. (And in this heartbeat Kakashi knows how he wants the jounin to handle the new strangeness between them. The answer is: _please pretend_.)

Out of sync. This is how Kakashi feels. All of his responses are that blink too slow or too quick, his thought processes swinging between Katsu's and his own. (But Katsu's are his own, kind of. He made Katsu. He is Katsu. ...No. What?)

He realizes the silence has been hanging for too long and hastily jerkily harshly says, "I - know." He likes this response, so he tries it out a second time. "I know. I have determined that the longevity and circumstances of my mission have negatively affected my proficiency. I plan to remedy this as soon as possible." It is more wordy than usual even for him, but in this minuscule fraction of his life, with this sun soaking warmly into the dark material of the mask covering his face - _with this man_ he cannot hide all of his chinks. That is asking too much.

There is silence again for a tenth of a minute while they each measure what they have not said and what they have said and the worth of any of it. In a mutated sort of reverse-psychology, the things worth saying (the concerned ones, the truthful ones, the messy ones) are the ones not communicated.

And now the Yellow Flash turns the full force of his gaze and smile on Kakashi; Kakashi takes it unflinchingly (but it is costing him so much).

"Okay then. Let's fight."

So they do.

* * *

This is a mistake. This is such a mistake, and Kakashi knows it the moment the first punch is dodged. Moving so fast - too fast and it is a mistake and he is not quick enough or good enough and fuck he is touching him -

Stop. (He wants to stop so badly, needs to get away away away but he cannot, not yet not yet.)

Don't think.

* * *

Every tendon in his body is screaming. This is good. This is very good. This is almost enough to erase the scorching shove of blood pushing hummingbird-quick and fall-hard through his veins, the brash _need_ thickly lodging itself into the spaces between his joints that wants him to find some random stranger and just -

He had to lie to the Yellow Flash after training was over in order to get away from him. The - the total _misery _of being subjected to so much physical contact with the blond, of knowing all over again and too clearly the gleam in the man's eyes and the vicious genius in his smirk and the feel of hot breath ghosting against Kakashi's ear when -

Kakashi underestimated it. He knows this now - knows that he isn't going to be able to control himself, not when his body has been screaming for sex ever since he first woke in the Sandaime's office anyway. (It seems so long ago, but it has only been - fuck, it hasn't even been two weeks. ..._Fuck_, it has almost been two weeks.)

He has been running. He has run for fifty-three minutes now, forcing his body to go as quickly as possible and meticulously counting every second as he moves moves moves. He just - he has to get away from Konoha. Away from _that man_, because Kakashi had managed not to truly think about sex since his wet dream while in the hospital but now he has. And now he wants.

He _hurts _with how much he wants.

This: it has been fifty-four minutes (and _one, two, three, four_ seconds...), and his breathing is too uncontrolled and his muscles -

His right leg spasms - gives out in a shrug-twitch he doesn't see coming, and his left foot has nothing under it before he can think to use chakra to stick to the branch. Air and gravity, then pain, and now he is face-down in a firm layer of prickly objects, lungs forcefully emptied and skeleton jarred. When after a moment there is still no burst of specific agony hailing an injury, he stiffly turns his face to the side and opens his eyes to find himself at the base of an enormous pine tree. At least, he thinks it is a pine - all he can see is the trunk. The carpet of pine needles poking his mask and the decomposing pine cone protruding from said sea of needles exactly one inch from his left eye are semi-reliable hints, though.

He isn't too surprised this has happened. Kakashi has begun expecting his body to betray him, and, besides, there are more important things.

There is a knot in his throat. He ignores it like he has been for the past twelve minutes (and _twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three_ seconds), focusing instead on the contradictory sensation of having physically turned from solid mass to liquid and managing somehow to still thrum with tension in every boiling sinew, body curling unstoppably rigidly hesitatingly slightly.

But: the knot is tightening, hard and hot and thick and foreign (and afterwards: you child are extremely good with your tongue i believe ling deserves a raise for you). He inhales past it, almost desperate now because whatever this is, it isn't something he is familiar with, and that is all he needs to know. He doesn't want new things. He doesn't even want old things. Old things have changed - today is brutal evidence of that - and new things just keep destroying who he is who he used to be who he wants to be who he should be -

He screws his eyes closed. There is a sound like a gasp, like a choke. (Like a sob - but not quite. This is not the occasion when Kakashi will experience crying for the first time since infancy.)

Kakashi jerks down his mask with weak, fumbling fingers and - breathes.

Breathes.

Breathes.

Here is how he does it: he breathes steadily deeply shudderingly in with his mouth and out with his nose (subconsciously refusing to breathe in through his nose - he cannot stand to smell the fresh pine scent of his father's suicide), his body trembling and revolting against him. All he does is breathe, pouring with the fervor of a waterfall every ounce of his awareness into the action. Thought is gone and sensation is gone and Minato is gone and Ling is gone and Ishida is gone and Katsu is gone and Kakashi is gone.

Kakashi is not here right now. Try again later.

* * *

Something prickly digging into his cheek is what brings him back to himself. He opens his eyes, a muscle in his jaw flinching as his blackened one makes the entirety of its severity known to him for the first time. He sees: pine needles. Of course. He examines the organic matter surrounding his immediate line of sight and considers moving.

Watch. This is when Kakashi realizes where he is - fifty-four minutes out from the village while running at top speed, alone and physically incapacitated. He makes to get to his feet in a void-born fling of _movement _(because his teacher was right and Kakashi really has begun hesitating - because he refuses to do so anymore) but, in a flash of pain and sheer disobedience on his body's end, somehow ends up flat on his back. Intelligently, he doesn't retry immediately. Instead, he takes the pain and rides it (please sir do me beat me rape me one more time), staring up at the lush, interlocking foliage that is blocking his view of the sky. And he -

Smiles. Tiredly wryly darkly - he smiles, and it isn't _for _anyone. It isn't a lie or a gift or a promise or a tactic or anything except a smile. It isn't a very good smile, at that. It is a little lopsided and really at least half-smirk, and there is too much depth where the wild things are (where the monsters are, the ones most can't bear to admit are in their world), but the important thing is that it isn't a smile the Cat taught him. He doesn't even notice what he is doing.

(He will have exactly five more of these in his life.)

And now he murmurs with curved lips to no one, to the watery shadows of the forest, "Train responsibly."

(If Kakashi was a different person - not a sharp and deadly and beautiful and tie-less eleven year old who is willing to do anything the Hokage orders - he would be laughing hysterically. He is not, though.)

Seven seconds, and he slowly begins picking himself up.

* * *

The run back to Konoha isn't as difficult as the last time he made it (hurt and beyond differentiating pain and too far beyond chakra depletion and much too far beyond exhaustion and gladly incapable of any thought other than _konoha_), but that doesn't mean that it isn't hard going. He doesn't dare to attempt anything quicker than a steady lope, and he is fairly sure that even this pace is something any medic-nin would slap him for.

It takes him at least twice as long to cover the distance again. (He doesn't count this time.) When he arrives, his body feels like lead and he has forty-five minutes before he needs to be at the restaurant to meet with his team.

The Yellow Flash can't see him like this. He - there can't be another talk. Kakashi - he won't be able to handle it. He won't.

He does and doesn't like it when the jounin obliviously showcases how involved he is in Kakashi's life. It makes him despair just a little - awkward and rookie and tentative with the alien sensation - when it happens now because the chances of disentangling himself from the man are so close to nil as to be nonexistent. The sincere concern, the too-real - the man is too real with Kakashi, more real than he is with anyone else, and every time Namikaze Minato is too himself it makes Kakashi want to hope and _try_. (Last night: _dont _is what leaps quietly from kakashi's lips now _dont dont do that._)

He already wants too much.

Kakashi: in the privacy of his flat, fingers twisting into seals and a murmur breaking the plastic silence.

A cold-faced kunoichi with boyish hips makes her way to the hospital and asks for Medic Masai through tight lips.

* * *

It is five seconds before seven o'clock, but Minato is not actually counting. (That is what he tells himself.) Rin and Obito are already here, the latter only on time because Minato escaped before they could remember again to argue about coming together.

Seven o'clock. Minato wants to drum his fingers but doesn't, very aware of his Uchiha's sullen silence and Rin's expectant eye on the door. He -

He doesn't know what to think. He doesn't - he doesn't really know Kakashi anymore, not even as almost-well as he used to. This isn't - this isn't the Kakashi -

But the boy has been gone for a while. It is to be expected that everyone is a little different. Give it a month or two.

(That is what he tells himself. It isn't as easy to believe, but he forces himself to anyway.)

Fifteen seconds to Kakashi literally being late.

He doesn't know what to think. Kakashi is never late. (Give him time.) Minato - refuses the worn thought cycle and wraps his hands around his cooling tea.

Nine seconds.

"So, Rin," Minato says, pulling up a smile with practiced ease and ignoring the girl's jerk of surprise, "how do you think you and Obito did on the - "

"There's the bastard," Obito interrupts.

Minato doesn't notice the subtle lowering of his shoulders, the rise of his chin - he is already raising his arm to catch his just-shy-of-tardy student's attention. (Minato has never realized outside of missions that his blond hair is a beacon.) The boy begins picking his way through the tables, and Minato sits back with a warm grin. He can feel anticipation and slight glee bubbling up through his gut now, worry mostly dismissed.

He turns to his seated students.

"Everyone remembers what to do, right?"

Rin's eyes are shining as she nods, and Minato remembers the girl's crush on Kakashi all over again. Obito is scowling as he says, "Yeah, yeah, we know." The his face lightens a little. "I already gave him my present, huh?"

Rin turns to him instantaneously, mouth down-turned. "You shouldn't have hit - "

And here is Kakashi.

There is a general snap to attention, and Rin giggles. Minato makes a mental note to give her lessons in subterfuge even as he nods in greeting and evaluates Kakashi's movements. Not overly tense, no limp - he is obviously not as bad off as Minato had first thought. Something in him relaxes. He allows Kakashi the time to sit, then opens his mouth to speak.

"So tonight we've got something important to recognize."

Another giggle from Rin. She is fairly vibrating in her seat. Obito tilts his head at her and stares, plan forgotten.

"What the hell was that?" Bewilderment creases the black-haired boy's brow.

Distracted immediately, she defensively says, "What?"

"That noise."

Minato wants to close his eyes.

"What're you - "

"Enough, you two," the jounin finds himself interrupting them with, weary and half-amused. _Fuck it. _"Kakashi - " and his student is looking at him even as Rin and Obito look at Kakashi - "happy birthday!"

The chuunin: there is no reaction at all for a few seconds, and then a slow blink.

Minato waits for a response beyond that. All there is is a few more seconds of silence, and now Obito is impatient.

"It's your birthday, asshole. Wait, don't tell me you actually forgot it! That'd just be too perf- "

"Shut_ up_, Obito! And you're wrong anyway - his birthday w- "

Minato has been looking at the too-still birthday boy. Now, though, he says absently, "Shut up." The two immediately quiet, probably out of shock. "Kakashi had more important things to worry about." A small twitch of the young prodigy's right index finger.

Obito and Rin just stare at him blankly, and Minato has to remind themselves that they are still simply children despite everything. (It is sometimes easy to forget with his third student, but Minato believes fiercely that Kakashi deserves to be a kid and refuses to allow himself to forget. He hasn't got it down-pat quite yet, but he tries.)

"Kakashi," Minato continues smoothly, "you missed your birthday. You're twelve now."

There is a strange sound that he doesn't have the time to recognize because suddenly - Kakashi is moving, leaning forward and propping his elbows on the table. Suddenly, his masked face is resting casually on his palm - suddenly there is a slight crinkle of the skin around the boy's eyes that Minato identifies as a smile.

But: "I don't have much time to stay, Sensei." And the Kakashi-smile is gone just as quickly as it came, loose posture straightening into ramrod-straightness with it.

"Why not?" bursts out of Rin.

Kakashi looks at her, then back at Minato. There is disappointment (and he shouldn't be disappointed - should have expected this) sinking into every bone of his body, but Minato smiles at him.

"...I suppose I could stay for a while." It is like the words are coming against Kakashi's will, and the chuunin is still looking at Minato. Minato wonders if there is something on his face.

He dismisses the thought as unimportant and taps the table a single decisive time, disappointment gone.

"Alright then! Let's order, hm? And we'll have the waitress bring out the cake with the food."

* * *

Kakashi has realized something. He cannot have the Yellow Flash as his sensei anymore.

It seems like an obvious observation, but he has subconsciously and deliberately avoided this thought for a while now - even managed not to realize it this afternoon. Now, though - now he leaps over rooftops more quickly than necessary and knows that he cannot have the Yellow Flash as his sensei anymore. Now he lands in a secluded training ground and knows that he absolutely must be ready for the next jounin exam - now he punches a stump one two three hundred times, not pausing when it finally shatters (takes too long too long) except to switch to a new one, then another, and knows that he needs to be capable again. It will take time, but he can cut it down if he goes hard enough.

Quick. Quick - he needs to be capable again, and he cannot fall into Katsu when he doesn't know how to act, not even for a few seconds. (He does not hate. He is not angry. He is calm. He is numb. He is thinking clearly. The dinner - caving - Katsu - is a sign, and he is centered now.)

He cannot believe that he actually let himself be Katsu for a few seconds. He cannot believe it, so he does not think about it beyond that.

Kakashi tells himself: do not touch him. do not let yourself be alone with him. do not let him see. do not let anyone see. do not look. do not kiss him. do not be weak. do not stop trying not to love him.

There are a lot of things he knows. There are a lot of things he tells himself. There are a lot of punches thrown.

And he begins retraining himself to his former exaction.

He makes it to his apartment before his body gives out on him, the soldier pill from before dinner taking its toll. The last thing he thinks as his bedroom floor rushes up to meet his face is that Medic Masai is going to kill him and he has barely perfected the first kata.

It isn't enough.


	11. Chapter 11

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**A/N: **Something that should be clarified - this story will go on for quite a while longer. It's simply in a little transition phase now. When I said that I have no clue when this is going to end, I was telling the truth, but that end is a good way away. I anticipate possibly another ten chapters. I'm not making promises - I don't know how much space what I want to do will take up - but it'll be more or less that. Possibly drastically. I'm just ballparking here.

And the beginning of this chapter isn't confusing at all. Keep reading - it's very obvious what I'm doing, though I'm sorry that this story is being written so slowly that a reread of previous chapters is sometimes necessary to pick up on everything. This scene is a continuation of a scene from Chapter Eight, if you'd like to refresh your memory. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on where the characters are right now, too.

Enjoy!

* * *

_Warning: The following fanfiction contains very extreme darkness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological mindfuckery. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please click the back button._

**_These Are All Things You Don't Understand_**

**_Chapter Eleven_**

**_

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_**

"I'm a ninja, Ling."

Big blue eyes, filled with trust and bewilderment and something else that Ling has never vocalized but made obvious with every glance Kakashi's way. Blue eyes, and there is realization slowly creeping through them but right now they are Minato's and -

Kakashi kisses him, long and hard and passionate and without deceit.

And then he kills him.

Kakashi does not open his eyes to watch the cadaver fall, a man (who loved him) made nothing but dead weight by a simple jab of a senbon into the temple.

He does not look at the corpse. His eyes stay closed until he is in mid-turn, averted from the (pool of blood that is growing soupily) scene as he strides painfully to the door. His grip feels false (like a mannequin's) around the guilty sliver of steel.

Kakashi -

There is -

There is a void, his mother once told him quietly (cold digits brushing his brow, unusual and unnecessary physical contact that makes him faintly uncomfortable, and her eyes are cold as well, cold like their house and the metal of the kunai set his father left by Kakashi's futon the day after his second birthday). She told him, There is a void, and it is swallowing the universe. It is -

It is swallowing the universe, she said (steely eyes - like wet flint that will never spark again, just slice the fingers that fumble stiffly for warmth and flame and all of the other things a Hatake doesn't need).

She didn't say anything else.

There is a void, Kakashi doesn't tell the door in front of him.

And now it opens. The door - it OPENS, and standing before him is -

A man. A man with bloodshot eyes and a stale reek of sake and opium is standing before him, and they stare at each other not at all as the man suddenly smiles at him.

"Hey, beautiful. You seen a blond guy arou- HOLY FUCK - "

Kakashi's right hand moves of its own volition, a glint of metallic death which pierces an eye that has seen too much through to the brain.

Another thump of dead weight sprawling.

Kakashi closes his eyes and drags this new corpse entirely into the bedroom, not wincing at the agonizing pain in his rectum even though there is no one here to see. (The blood pours from his back still, not sluggish at all, and it is warm like the summer sun. He - he just hurts. He - he is so tired of hurting.)

As quickly as this, the mission has turned messy. He hears footsteps running down the hall, loud voices searching for the man who yelled before he died, and feels what is seemingly a boulder in his stomach.

The door opens again. A brunet sticks his head in and sees nothing but an illusion. So he doesn't see the hands reaching for his neck, and he certainly doesn't hear the crack of his spine.

A brunet walks out of the room, muttering and complaining under his breath. A well-built man moves by him like a force of nature before backtracking a step and seizing the brunet's upper arm. (He almost breaks the man's fingers out of somewhat rusty instinct but automatically suppresses the reflex.)

"Shinji, you found anything?"

The brunet known as Shinji sneers. And: "Do I look like I've found anything? Hands off," he growls, wrenching his arm away.

The big man glares half-heartedly, mutters, "I'll deal with you later," and is gone.

None of the peons in the hallway notice when the person wearing Shinji's face disappears.

Kakashi stands lopsidedly on the roof of the brothel, ignoring his body's protests. He is very still, very small, and no one would think he is about to -

Moonshimmer fingers fly through seals, and Kakashi feels dizzy as chakra rushes out of him (like water through a sluice) and embraces the walls of this house of - something he cannot define. He is abruptly breathless and seeing starbursts of light (minato minato minato) - and now the jutsu settles, invisibly solidifying the building into a death trap. (The Yellow Flash would kill him for having learned such a dangerously depleting jutsu - if the jounin knew. He doesn't, though, so....)

No one can get out.

Kakashi blinks once twice thrice - and blindly takes a deep breath, feeling the cuts on his back break open yet a-fucking-gain. He reaches for more chakra.

Here: the kitchens. They are empty save for a housemaid, a young girl not yet thirteen. She is thin - too thin - and her head is pillowed on bony wrists as she sleeps. She shivers in the cool night, and her body seems to lean into the warmth of the open hearth unconsciously. There is a single oil lamp flickering next to her, casting the circles under her eyes into worse relief.

Here: a gust of wind. (But the windows - the windows are closed to the chilly outdoors, so why -)

The lamp tips over.

(Cook did always say the hearth Ishida-sama demanded was pretentious and foolish.)

* * *

Kakashi opens his eyes. Something has woken him -

There is a clattering sound from the direction of the kitchen, quickly followed by hissed, unintelligible curses. Kakashi feels the clean, even soar of his sensei's chakra.

He closes his eyes and wishes for the first time in his life.

(What he wishes is: to not be here. To not have the man who is in his kitchen be in his kitchen. To be allowed to cut ties. To burn to leave to stop.)

He is so tired of hurting.

He pushes the exhaustion away. Emotions are a weakness. Emotions are are are a weakness -

He realizes in this moment that he is lying on the floor, the sight that greets his eyes nothing but the dusty darkness of the underside of his bed. (The apartment still needs to be cleaned, but this is unimportant in the face of everything.) He - does not know why he is not in his bed but is untroubled as he patiently waits to remember. (Kakashi is very used to waking up in unfamiliar places.) In a flash: team training sparring running running running hospital dinner - kakashi you missed your birthday youre twelve now - training collapsing.

Right. That would be why.

He knows to expect the pain that comes as he forces his stiff, tight muscles to move. Without wincing, he stands and straightens, only to stagger and nearly lose his balance as he falls to one knee in an abortive movement, managing to lessen the impact by half-catching on to the conveniently nearby mattress. His right bicep, tricep, and forearm scream in protest, and his lips tighten.

There is a sudden silence in the kitchen. Then: uncertain footfalls.

"Kakashi?"

"...Yes," he replies quietly.

"Good! You've got exactly seventeen minutes until breakfast is ready." The footsteps move away again, but not before Kakashi hears a low-pitched grumble of, "Still too skinny...This rate I'm going to have to start making scarecrow cracks..." that he knows is meant for his ears.

He does not think of another blond, does not think of the courtyard or the way that it seems all yellow-haired idiots of his acquaintance cluck over his weight. (Remember? Kakashi remembers. He remembers: i ambushed you on your way to dinner go eat something you're too skinny.)

He does not sigh. Instead, he carefully hoists himself up and pushes open the door of his small bedroom. He disappears into the bathroom, hoping that the Yellow Flash is as preoccupied by cooking as he sounds and won't catch sight of him as he is now, dirty and obviously still in yesterday's uniform. The commotion, louder now that the kitchen's owner has woken, is reminiscent of a particularly nasty bar brawl, snarls and intent threat and broken glass and all. The Yellow Flash is no chef.

The pounding spray of hot water eases the worst of the soreness. While he dries off, he rummages in his medicine cabinet for a topical cream and dry-swallows a couple of mild pain-killers, civilian strength so as not to impede his functioning.

He still has three minutes left when he finishes dressing, and he does a few quick stretches to limber up before finally joining his teacher.

The Yellow Flash is wearing an apron over his jounin uniform. It is simple and black and must be the jounin's because Kakashi knows that he himself does not own one. He does not cook. (Cooking is for humans. Cooking is for people who have hobbies and pets and witty conversations with the barrister at the corner cafe. Cooking - there was never anyone to teach him how. Trial and error only got him so far, all mess and waste and small fires, and cooking is for humans, not Hatake Kakashis.) Despite the neutrality of the apron, however, this sight -

Kakashi snorts, entirely forgetting the world and life and his life in this moment. The Yellow Flash whirls around, spatula in hand, and another shot of mirth streaks through Kakashi. There is a strange cough-choke noise that he will later realize to be a small laugh, and then the blond smiles and the sound is gone, all caught in Kakashi's throat as breath leaves him.

"Good morning," says his teacher.

"...Good morning." _I don't want you. _(A new trend starting now: he needs to lie to himself consciously, outright desperate for it to eventually become the truth. That is the way it is supposed to go, right?)

Another day. Another lie and another day.

* * *

It is six hours past breakfast, six hours past silence and withdrawal and the Yellow Flash's increasingly false expressiveness. Noon, now, and Kakashi twists in the wind to gain the momentum needed -

_Crack._

Right where the neck would be. He looks at the splinters of the wooden post he has been relearning chakra projection on, and then he turns to his teacher.

Who is running Obito through seals. Kakashi wonders idly what the jutsu is before experiencing all over again a placidity in his skeleton, a lethargy in his mind, and he waits for the jounin to finish and tell him what to do next. (And he does need someone to tell him what to do, lost and losing - this is that half-second of disorientation after the stage lights go out, when adrenaline's purpose is gone and all the work has been done and a flawless performance has been given and _what do you do now you ask yourself_. The most useless and only answer in the world: go back to your life.)

He knows how to be this. He knows. _Fuck _knowing -

Here is what you need to know.

This is life - Kakashi's life - as an exercise in meaninglessness (not meaningless, in Kakashi's eyes - but Kakashi's eyes are Konoha-tinted and fixed on Minato, so no one should listen to him. He doesn't know any better) and apathy and every _wrong wrong wrong_ situation dreamed up by humans like they are gods.

Here is what you need to know. Kakashi doesn't know anything about life and humanity and love and living. He trip hallucinates stark lines into the stunning and roll hallucinates death and desperatizes the if. He is scientific about the process even when not required and when pain should be defeated, not allowed to shatter its cycle all over the place like a masochistic wheel of fortune. Kakashi is fucked up.

Kakashi is fucked up.

He is sure there is a great explanation for this, some lesson that is too perfect and utter bullshit.

Here is what you need to know. Sometimes it is all just bullshit. Sometimes there is no reason and there are no right words and everything stays all jarred and the world is scummier than it was when it made sense.

- The ordered kind of sense, not this new, too flimsy, bullshit sense. That just has no excuse.

Kakashi spars with the Yellow Flash through a cottony, distant sort of delirium and waits to be strong again.

* * *

It is Saturday. Kakashi does not report at the bridge for training - Team Seven will not meet today. He is not exactly sure what his sensei is doing, but it involves the Hokage and the war and Kakashi does not ask. (He does not want to know. Tomorrow evening, though, he will hear whispers of blood and massacre and a quiet, quasi-haunted _i cant believe i lived through it and with my career intact to boot ive never been so glad to have namikaze around. _And the slightly drunk reply that will come from between hunched-over shoulders, dirty hair brushing the counter of the sake stand as a blank face grinds his palms slowly and thoroughly into his eye sockets: _only thing that saved it from the clusterfuck itd been turning into good thing hes on our side huh though it didnt do emikochan or natsu or takiwara much good_.)

So there is a whole new schedule for the day without the usual unwelcome hindrances. He rises at five and begins training immediately, focusing mainly on conditioning his body and muscle memory - he knows that being able to trust his body again is the most important thing. When the sky lightens, he pauses to eat two extremely nutritional, extremely revolting health bars the medic insisted he begin consuming in large quantities. Evidently Kakashi is underweight and vitamin deficient. He actually follows the woman's instructions on this, methodical with it because Medic Masai is reasonably competent - and because a shinobi has a responsibility to keep his body in top shape. If nothing else, he knows now, the rules matter more than anything. The rules will never change, will never need to be pushed away in an attempt to defy human weakness. There will be no need for abandonment on either end.

(Not like everyone whom Kakashi has put his faith in.)

He runs through katas for the entire morning. Lunch is more of the health bars.

After the sun reaches its zenith, he works on perfecting his unfinished jutsu for the first time in almost four months. (His mantra: jounin exam.)

Sunday is more of the same. But Monday:

Monday morning is blazingly bright. Sunlight is sheer and invasive, reflecting off of everything and succeeding in making even Kakashi wish he owned a pair of sunglasses. Team Seven squints their way to the Hokage Tower, to the mission center and everything they are after but will not name even in their own heads. (Strength. Recognition. The triumph of taught ideals. Happiness. Duty.) Kakashi does not look at his sensei. The Yellow Flash does not look at him.

They don't see the Hokage. Team Seven is simply a rookie squad, and they are handed a scroll by a sleepy chuunin - fortunately, Kakashi distantly notes, not one of the pair who had been manning the desk upon his return from Iwa.

"So?" Obito asks impatiently the instant they step out of the room. "What do we got?"

Blue eyes slant an indulgent look at the boy before settling into unreadability. (But Kakashi knows - ) "C-rank. We're manning a supply convoy to the Kusa border."

- Kakashi feels himself phase out. It is strange - everything seems to sharpen and deaden and fade, and he is Hatake Kakashi again. No emotion attacks him as he looks his teacher in the eye. The man breaks it, glancing away in a second flat and Kakashi isn't certain why. He doesn't care. He asks, "Expected danger?" and correctly doesn't expect eye contact with the response.

"Bandits, possibly. But there is a war going on, so it's more likely that Iwa nin will try an ambush."

Obito looks excited and nervous. Rin looks determined and nervous, but she hides it better. Kakashi doubts that either of them realize the seriousness of this mission, realize that only a few months ago it would have at least been a squad of chuunin and jounin assigned it.

"When do we leave, Sensei?"

"Tomorrow morning at nine. Meet at the gate and pack enough supplies for two weeks." His lips quirk faintly. "Obito, keep in mind that candy bars do not satisfactorily replace the need for ration bars. We don't want you fainting again."

A shameless grin. "Meh. Rations just taste so ba-ad."

"They supply all of the required vitamins and nutrients," Rin parrots, all medic-nin-in-training and Kakashi doesn't care even a little bit and the truth of that is incredible.

"Sure they do. But there should be a law against making us eat something that tastes so nasty - man, it's not even the taste. It's the rotten-yogurt texture when you swallow - "

" - Aaaaand that's enough of _that_ topic. Obito, no candy bars. Rin, don't defend the rotten yogurt. Kakashi - " And the jounin truly looks at Kakashi for the first time today. There is no levity in his gaze when he says, "Well, I guess I'd have to get you to actually emote before bossing you on how to." Obito snickers at the supposed joke and Rin grins, half-covering it with her hand.

Kakashi doesn't care even a little bit (that they keep pushing and pulling in all the wrong directions, that the Yellow Flash is asking him to give even a tiny hint of what has gone wrong between them and _stop shutting me out goddammit_), and the reality of it just won't stop saving him.

He closes his eyes as his team splits up noisily, nin sandals tapping carelessly on the polished floors. His body language is more completely nonexistent than it has been in months; he should relish in it, but the best part is that even such enjoyment is not a part of this mindset's programming.

A mission. (And maybe he has been a whore his whole life and was only recently given his membership card.)


	12. Chapter 12

_Warning: The following fanfiction contains very extreme darkness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological mindfuckery. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please click the back button._

**These Are All Things You Don't Understand**

**Chapter Twelve**

**

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**

Minato doesn't understand what the hell the world thinks it is doing.

It is two days into their mission, and there has been nothing except endless plodding and squabbles between Rin and Obito about who gets to ride inside one of the three wagons, theoretically as a security measure. Their serious attitude managed to last all of the first six hours without threat, which Minato isn't sure should make him as exasperatedly amused as it does, especially considering the extremely real risk of this situation. The convoy driver, a jounin in civvies who he vaguely knows and managed to get Sarutobi to concede this mission asks for, has nothing except contempt-filled glances to contribute to conversation. And Kakashi -

Well, he doesn't really want to think about Kakashi. Kakashi is the problem.

And this leads to: Minato doesn't understand what the hell the world thinks it is doing.

The world hasn't made sense since - oh, maybe since Jiraiya actually managed to get published, so it's not like he isn't used to it. He is. He expects it, expects unhappy endings and wrongness and guilt and tragedy and agony and irony and just enough happiness thrown in to make everything really hurt before it-doesn't-matter steps up. It doesn't matter. He just - never thought there would come a time when _Kakashi _wouldn't make sense to him. When their thing wouldn't make sense to him. When Minato wouldn't want to look at Kakashi or talk to him and not even know _why._

All he knows is the strange -

He doesn't really want to think about Kakashi. Kakashi has changed. Minato is missing something, he knows, and one of the things that doesn't make sense is that Kakashi isn't - Minato would never call it sharing; Hatake Kakashi doesn't share, never has and never will, but - allowing Namikaze Minato to understand.

And following that: Kakashi does not want him to understand. He does not want Minato's understanding. He does not want Minato. He does not want Minato in his life.

It doesn't make _sense_.

The thing that is the most baffling and senseless: Minato is letting it happen. He is finding himself not pushing his way back inside Kakashi's guard, not breaking the silences that need to be broken, not dragging answers out of the boy-man. He is letting it happen. He is letting Kakashi shut him out with only a pretense of protest.

He doesn't understand what the hell the world thinks it is doing.

This is when he senses a jutsu being released.

* * *

There have been three teams in Kakashi's eight years of mostly temporary assignment.

Once upon a time: he was assigned to the first straight out of the academy. His teammates were boys, one a Hyuuga and the other with the unassuming family name of Taka-something. Ten and eleven respectively, they got along well but didn't have time to waste on a little kid. They griped about their unsmiling sensei fairly often but always followed his instructions. The contradiction inherent in this puzzled Kakashi, but his father's only response was that a shinobi should not defame a superior. (He looked up "defame" in the dictionary later. It made sense, but the explanation only told him that his squadmates weren't very good ninja. He supposed that was all he really needed to know.) Despite the lopsided teamwork, the three boys grew in skill steadily. When their team graduated to C-ranked missions, the Hyuuga proudly showed off the naginata his sister had given him.

A month and a half later, Kakashi watched his limping sensei return the shattered remains of the gift to the girl, along with a blood-smeared hitai-ite. The fourteen year old was all blank white eyes and tight mouth and stuttered breathing, her grief quartered in comparison to the wailing civilian mother of the other boy.

The jounin gave up his title of genin instructor and disappeared back into the ranks. Kakashi never saw him again.

His next sensei was a month after his sixth birthday. When he first met the team, her teal hair was strangely engrossing. He didn't touch it. His teammates were a boy and a girl. They didn't talk to him - could barely stand to look at him. Kakashi supposed it was fitting to mourn a comrade, but he disapproved that they allowed it to get in the way of mission efficiency. (When he is eight and his father is destroyed by team bonds, he doesn't understand and never wants to. Never. He won't allow it.) They were distant with him, the girl erupting one day during training and making it very clear that they only suffered him in order to qualify for the chuunin exams again.

A few months later, they were all chuunin. The squad disbanded, and Kakashi walked away without farewell or even a glance back. He caught glimpses of the jounin's teal hair for about half of a year after, but then she disappeared. Kakashi didn't go to the funeral.

He spent most of the next five years being put on teams on a mission-by-mission basis. For the first two, Sakumo would instruct him when he had the time. After that, Kakashi mostly trained himself, though the Toad Sage had an unreliable habit of appearing every now and then and giving him some obscure, twisty exercise to master. (He never expected the Sandaime to do anything for him, despite the man's old student once having been a frequent visitor at their house. He didn't know how often Sakumo had run missions with the Sannin - knew how closely he resembled his father but didn't know it was in every way except the ones that mattered. Sakumo had never been human in front of his son, and there was no part of his end that was not debilitatingly painful to his intimates.)

And then the third - at eleven he was placed on Team Minato. A man, a girl, and a boy - a jounin and two fresh genin, and they managed to make more of a team out of themselves than Kakashi had ever had experience with before. He didn't understand and didn't want to, didn't want to understand this innocent girl who liked him, this attention-seeking boy who joked so much - this brilliant, intriguing man. (Maybe if they had gotten to him from the first, if he hadn't been too smart for his own good and graduated early - if he had graduated with them and they had been his first team - maybe they would've succeeded. Maybe. Maybe maybe maybe. It doesn't matter.) The jounin was strong in every sense of the word, someone Kakashi first respected and then helplessly and genuinely liked, almost frightened by the strange feeling. This team seemed to be doing the job - this team had a quiet hush of promise to it that Kakashi never even allowed himself to acknowledge for fear of destroying it.

(But all good things come to an end.)

* * *

Eight of them, only four jounin, and Kakashi's tanto is ringing out against a wakizashi before he even registers the movement. He only has a fraction of a second to appreciate that his reflexes are returning before he is dancing the line of split-second close combat, a dozen shots blocked and returned. He misses one, taking a glancing blow to his left shoulder. The man is bigger than him but not much slower all the same, and when Kakashi sees his right ankle falter in a dip in the road, he quickly takes advantage, his blade meeting little resistance as it slices the Iwa-nin's trachea. He has moved on to the next before the blood begins spraying.

A blond this time, wiry and lean with literal fists of steel. The metal flashes in the dying sunlight, and Kakashi leans back, blood burning, to avoid the swipe of the suddenly sharp tips. A few wisps of silver hair fall and a line of blood beads on his cheekbone as he jerks back up, kneeing the overreached ninja in the stomach and palm-striking his neck -

Only to miss as there is suddenly a rock in the man's place. Kakashi turns quickly but the earth is suddenly no longer beneath him - _ram boar ox dog - _and Kakashi is behind the man - knee to the kidney, palm strike to the neck, left roundhouse kick - dodging the wide kunai - and another, catch that one - spin and _jab - _

Another down. He has been peripherally aware of his team fighting around him, but now he sees that the Yellow Flash is locked in combat with two of the jounin, one a leering woman with tattoos around her eyes and a whisper-quick katana and the other a slim teenager obviously used to partnering with her. They have been flashing all over the path, the occasional devastating jutsu leaving pocks in the terrain, and now they are in the trees and now they are gone. There is a corpse already collapsed on a bush. The others - Rin's hands are a glowing green as she faces off with -

He is crouched in front of Obito, kunai singing out against a kama, and his left hand darts for the chain the scythe-like blade is attached to before its owner can jerk it back. He yanks on it hard and fast, but to no avail -

White hot fire in his left hip, wetness, and he is pinned with a forearm around his neck and a knee to his lower back.

He hears, "Just kill the kid!" from about ten feet away and then a cut-off scream, probably from the kama-wielder. The knee at his back slips, and in a spike of adrenalin he twists up and around with kunai between every finger, ripping through the chest of his once-captor.

Another scream - _Rin_ - and his hand is seizing the eighth Iwa-nin's wrist and jerking it out of its seals even as there is a flash of light and the man is crumpling at Rin's genjutsu'd feet.

Sensei.

"Are you okay?" with intense blue eyes, looking straight at him for the first time in days that feel like forever. Intense intense intense, too intense with adrenalin pumping through his heart and his lungs going double-time - too intense in this almost-sex, and it takes everything Kakashi has not to allow his gaze to drift down to the man's mouth.

He hears, "Fine," as if from a distance, then realizes it has issued from his own vocal cords. (Too breathlessly.) The Yellow Flash nods, still looking at him - still _fucking looking at him _and it needs to _stop _because Kakashi is incapable of breaking it -

The Yellow Flash wrenches his gaze away, and Kakashi sees a cut on the man's throat, bleeding lightly into his collar. There is a mumble of _fuck _and then "_Kai._ Rin - " before his ears buzz out on him, his thundering pulse the only sound he can recognize. Stiffly, mechanically, he turns to find Obito. The crumpled form is where he last saw it in the seconds before he blocked the enemy's kama. There is a small pool of blood, but Kakashi can see the boy's chest rising and falling, so he knows that whatever the injury is, it hasn't been fatal yet. He takes a step and halts, his hip pulsing its pain through the endorphins. He does not grimace. (Pain isn't really worth flinching at anymore, is nothing he can't take - he is who his village and his father want/ed him to be. And he tells himself not to love the pain, tries to tell himself that he doesn't need to anymore, _doesn't need to anymore,_ THIS IS NOT NECESSARY ANYMORE.)

"Sensei. Obito."

The Yellow Flash's head turns his way, then snaps to the unconscious body of the Uchiha. He barks, "Rin!" and flashes the two of them over so as to not lose a second. Rin sets to work immediately, the green chakra casting a sickening pall on the tight lines of her dirt-smudged face.

Kakashi looks away, sheer force of will disallowing his eyes from following the sleek lines of his teacher's back as he bends over Obito, and begins retrieving all of the thrown weapons. He does it without limping.

* * *

Rin nearly passes out from lack of chakra by the time she finishes with Obito's concussion and split side. The Yellow Flash manages to steady her, though, and leads her to sit in one of the wagons. It is fully night now. She eats a ration bar and almost immediately falls asleep. Kakashi picks up Obito's now steadily breathing body and lays him down beside her. He does it with his hip still sluggishly bleeding. By this point, he has burned all of the corpses in the immediate vicinity - including the body of the convoy driver that he found still slumped in the driver's seat - bandaged his hip, and changed into a fresh uniform.

When he leaves the wagon, he finds his teacher leaning against a tree and surveying the damaged land through the dark of the night. The man does not give any sign of acknowledgment. Kakashi simply stands there, not looking at the man and considering starting a fire. But they should get away from here, get off of the road.

The Yellow Flash echoes his thoughts. "We need to move. Are you good?"

"...Yes. I haven't burned the two you were fighting, though. Are they far?"

A cynical smile curves the man's mouth. (Stress has made him forget that things are not as usual between them, has made his guard drop as it always does with Kakashi. How has it come to this? Why is Minato the only one who has recognized what is needed to gain Kakashi's trust, the only one willing to make the exception and put in that effort and allow the boy to understand him? And why is that now even this one bond is falling from him?)

"The boy's corpse isn't an issue. The kenjutsu-user, though, the woman - she's pinned to a tree about a mile in."

Kakashi nods and makes to go after it.

"No," his teacher says. "I'll do it. See if you can have everything ready to go by the time I return." _Guard them_ doesn't need to be said.

Kakashi doesn't need to nod this time, the man gone too quickly. Kakashi goes to the front of the convoy and unhitches the dead horse with half-blind hands. There is only the light of the stars to work with. The live stallion is still bulge-eyed and terrified - instead of prancing in irritation, though, it is stock-still. It shies only a little as Kakashi makes quick work of the traces, modifying them a bit. That finished, his fingers dart through seals and slap the earth, smoothing the craters from it and erasing the blood stains, invisible as they are in the darkness.

Light. The Yellow Flash.

"Let's go," he says, and Kakashi can hear his smile. He ignores the lingering wantwantwant that has become one with his blood and presses his wounded hip hard so as to not return it.

(That is asking too much.)

* * *

Their time isn't as good with only one horse, but the jounin stops them about an hour later, parking them in a clearing a few miles off of the road.

"You're hurt."

Kakashi doesn't say anything.

"God_damn_it, Kakashi."

Carefully not defensive, Kakashi says, "Rin was incapacitated."

"And yet I _am _apparently a jounin." The sarcasm in this is palpable and cutting in its frustration.

Again, Kakashi doesn't reply. This is going exactly where he hadn't wanted it to.

The man sighs and jumps down from the driver's seat. It is a few moments before he speaks, moments where he simply eyes Kakashi's still figure in the darkness.

Then: "Light a fire while I secure the perimeter."

The next few minutes are spent piling up the driest wood he can find, which isn't difficult as it hasn't rained in a week. He casts a double-sided genjutsu, feeling the chakra drain in his worn state. Despite the fight only taking ten minutes, fifteen max, he is tired. It is nothing he cannot work through, however, and he lights the fire with a tightly controlled katon jutsu. When his instructor still hasn't appeared, he occupies his time with trying to discover the most comfortable way to sit without aggravating his injury. He quickly realizes there isn't one, barring lying down. He remains standing.

It is quiet here. Kakashi doesn't relax. He feels himself tensing more and more as the seconds tick by. (He knows what is coming - but not totally, not really, and that only makes it worse.)

The Yellow Flash steps back into the clearing, the firelight flickering over him and emphasizing the stains of the skirmish. He expels a great sigh, then seems to draw himself in and up. His eyes flick to Kakashi's.

"Left hip?"

Kakashi half-nods.

"Lie down." He ducks into the second wagon and grabs Rin's kit.

Kakashi remains standing. "Sir - " _I can't don't make me do this don't put me in this situation you are asking too much._

"Cut it with the bullshit, Kakashi, and lie the hell down." His hand settles on Kakashi's shoulder now, gently applying pressure, and Kakashi represses a shudder before complying silently. He knows that fighting this will only make the situation worse. This would be bad in normal circumstances. Now, post-battle and with Minato in enough of a state that he is actually swearing, is going to be horrible.

He lies flat on his back in the grass and resists the urge to protect his vulnerable middle. He tells himself _its just sensei _and it doesn't really help at all, simply makes him even more hyper-alert and sensitive. He can feel the grass brushing against the strip of back bared by his misaligned shirt.

The Yellow Flash stops messing around with the kit and reaches for Kakashi's shirt, lifting it.

"Hm. Your pants are in the way."

Kakashi closes his eyes and wills this not to be happening. He unbuttons his trousers with untrembling fingers and slides the cloth down with the band of his underwear to bare the bandaged hip. Strong, steady hands remove the stained bandages, one big palm on the small of Kakashi's back helping him raise his hips while the other unwraps the bloody strips of cloth.

Kakashi is attempting to not be here at all, but jolts of heat and electricity keep making their way through his limbs at every brush of skin. It is taking all of his effort to simply not get an erection. Finally - centuries later - the thorough bandaging is undone, and Minato grunts at the sight. Kakashi does not have much meat on him, but the kama managed to slice the muscle directly below the jut of bone straight through. Kakashi feels his teacher's hands probe his side, then absentmindedly push his pants lower.

He just manages not to let his breath hitch. As it is, his throat is tight with arousal, his fingers aching to touch and take and -

He slams it all away, or at least tries to. He isn't capable of much right now. This is undoing his very being, tearing him apart with gentle, rough fingertips.

His teacher's voice breaks the silence, and Kakashi has never been so grateful for a distraction in his life. (Kakashi underestimates his attraction to Minato. It is everything - lines, shadows, form, grace, humor, faith, intelligence, cynicism, voice, smile, skill - everything, even into the negative where these qualities may lack. Everything. He is everything.) "You did a good job of hiding this," the man says tonelessly as he disinfects the deep gash. "I almost didn't notice your tension in the dark."

Kakashi wants to close his eyes against the wash of the man's voice, against this onslaught of touch and nearness and _beauty_, but he knows better than to lose track of what is happening at every second - lose track of himself. Instead, he forces himself to find a response, any response, any diversion - "Your demeanor indicates that this is not satisfactory."

The blond's hands still, his face a study of shadow in the firelight. "Don't hide from me" is the short reply.

Kakashi feels something faintly hysterical bubbling in the pit of his stomach. (It is laughter.) He pushes it down.

They are silent for a minute, the jounin's hands moving steadily. Kakashi would have thought that he would be desensitized to the warm reality of them by now, but instead it seems that every point of contact has been seared into his being. Desire coils tight in his gut, and Kakashi is truly incapable of maintaining his iron composure any longer. His breathing quickens.

The jounin notices. Of course he notices.

"I know it hurts," he says, squeezing Kakashi's thigh comfortingly. "Just a little longer."

At the touch, a jolt of pure lust almost stops Kakashi's breathing altogether. And now - now Minato is bending his head, double-checking for any debris left in the wound, and Kakashi can feel the man's breath against the hypersensitive patch of skin. He shifts.

The man straightens, smiling.

"All right. Let's get this fixed, shall we?"

After, when the injury has been half-healed and re-bandaged, when they have eaten and the Yellow Flash has claimed first watch, Kakashi doesn't sleep. He knows better. (It is a futile effort, though, and he knows that too. He will be dreaming of this for weeks to come, waking up flushed and hard and tangled in his bedding, a forbidden name on his tongue.)

(But he won't say that name, won't repeat that mistake. Something so glorious is only allowed once.)

* * *

**A/N:** It's been forever. I'm sorry. I've been blocking. I finally sat down a few hours ago and bulldozed through it, so I apologize if this isn't up to standards. I'd appreciate your thoughts, especially if they're more than two words - though I love those too. :D


	13. Chapter 13

_Warning: The following fanfiction contains very extreme darkness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological mindfuckery. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please click the back button._

**These Are All Things You Don't Understand**

**Chapter Thirteen**

* * *

They receive three days of respite before the next ambush. The break isn't very restful at all, everyone on edge with even Rin's guard heightened. It is quiet in stark contrast to the first day of travel, a silence not so much newly born as it is infinite - a line that has stretched on since (Kakashi's) life began, reaching into the past and present and future, waiting patiently beneath every word and laugh and gasp of pain. (Look underneath the underneath and find - a kind of peace that is not peace except when it is. But wait, wait - this will come later.)

Kakashi thinks that he has not spent this much time around his team without inane noise in the entirety of their acquaintance with each other. He doesn't appreciate it as much as he would in any other circumstances. Here are the reasons: A non-medicated Obito sleeps fitfully in one of the wagons and neither Kakashi nor the Yellow Flash have spoken to each other since the sun rose on Kakashi's bandaged hip, illuminating their tension all over again (and cats have their tongues, lying limp and caught and thick in their mouths). Rin simply does her part silently, scouting ahead more frequently than necessary and attending to Obito's torn side with almost startling efficiency. She can't give the boy anything to take away the pain without also taking away his lucidity, and Obito in pain but capable of defending himself to some extent is better than a doped-up instant corpse - just add kunai. It is very obvious that she really dislikes his pinched brow and slightly feverish mutterings. Kakashi becomes used to this new tight line of her mouth.

So. Three days of Kakashi staunchly attempting to recenter himself, doggedly trying to rediscover his mission mentality because it can't have crumbled so easily. His means of living as a shinobi cannot have fallen to ash merely at the bidding of adrenalin and Minato's rough-gentle hands - it can't have, and he would pray because _it cannot have failed him so easily,_ but he knows no gods and has no faith (you liar - Hatake Kakashi, you are a _liar, _justifying it with necessity and ignorance and denial) and he still wakes with spilled sperm in his shorts and yellow hair blinding his inner vision, a crescent of indentions bitten into the pad of his thumb.

The small wounds are baseless and irregular to any eye but his own - a curiosity. By the third time Kakashi heals it in as many days, faint scars are beginning to appear.

It is yet another useless stretch of trees and forest road, yet another vulnerable expanse of enemy territory, and of course by the time Kakashi senses them, the Yellow Flash has just broken some missing-nin's neck. The cracking sound has barely disappeared when Kakashi is ducking a giant shuriken - and that was what they wanted him to do but too late, too late, and - there are two of them, one shirtless and the other with a smirk scarred into his mouth. He only has an instant to register this before they are doubleteaming him. His body moves quick quick quick punch parry duck jump - into a spinning kick, fling kunai, and Kakashi feels his lips bubble as he spews out fire. He dodges the scarred one's palmed kunai - but there are senbon where his body is going to be, and he curls, trying to pull himself short but momentum gets the better of him, and his right shoulder and side are pain pain pain but that doesn't matter. There is a - he jumps into a tree just as the grass turns to slop and solidifies, nature made into a weapon, and that was Shirtless so where is Smirk -

Behind him, and there is icy pain spreading through Kakashi's lower back but there is also his tanto in his left hand so he twists as his legs give out on him, feeling his blade sink in and out of foreign flesh (and this is your comfort, isn't it, Kakashi? This is the contact you know best, better than the touch of your parents) but really more preoccupied with the ground rushing at him. He swings out a hand blindly and feels his fingers catch on bark, nails ripping off - shoves his chakra out almost desperately but of course he has done this a million times before, the jolt of his arm nearly being dislocated as familiar as birdsong. He uses the momentum to try to get a good foothold on the bark, but his legs aren't really obeying him right now and he is too _vulnerable_.

So he lets go - falling that isn't flying and a moment of impact, a twenty-three foot fall which ends in a _snap _that he doesn't have the time to acknowledge. The quick and the dead, yes, and Kakashi will not be the latter. (He has a village to live for, and he will only die when the village needs him to - when he can do no more, when there are no more enemies for him to kill or missions that he is perfect for. He - this is his solace: He will always have a village to live for, to die for, a village that will never ask for more than he is willing to give because he is willing to give everything.) Quick: his legs have failed him so his fingers save his life instead, tripping into seals that only excaberate the millions of screaming nerves glistening rawly where his fingernails used to be.

Here is his miracle on this mission: Shirtless is not in his sights but Kakashi feels a flicker of the man's chakra even as his abused hands form the final seal, so he locks on and hurls it _there_, hearing only a thump as the genjutsu takes hold and the nin smacks to the ground a scant ten feet away, twitching. Kakashi's legs still aren't obeying him, which he is finding himself strangely amused by, but his kunai pouch is only half-empty so he pulls himself up and props himself against the trunk of the tree and aims for the exposed back of the neck. The metal lodges itself between the second and third vertebrae instead of the first two, but at this point he can't afford to nitpick his mistakes.

Except for this fleeting thought that is purely Katsu: _Way to get stabbed, moron. _But - here is a familiar high-pitched whistling sound, and he ducks beneath the wind jutsu, hearing the tree shatter behind him even as his body swivels on autopilot. There is a figure landing in a crouch behind him, and instantly he replaces himself with a broken branch but he doesn't have the control to pull that off again, so he forces his body to do this do this do this: fire chakra to soles, momentum of forearm against the solar plexus wreck-quick, pivot to jack-kick the side of the knee, catch the limp skull and _jerk_ -

Kakashi crumples to the ground with the corpse. His vision can't focus on the nin's slack facial features. The colors and lines are sliding and buzzing, particles turning void-dark. The wound in his lower back is pouring blood, he recognizes - the material of his flak jacket is already saturated. He cannot afford to pass out right now, though, not in the middle of a skirmish, so instead he levers his feet beneath him with his hands and pulls himself up, swaying. His vision - he can't focus on the scene around him, can't pick out Minato or Rin or enemies, but he stumbles forward a few steps and falls against -

A wagon wheel. Whole and still attached to a wagon, he assumes, and when he slumps to his knees, body shutting down, he has enough presence of mind to crawl under the caravan before everything goes dark.

* * *

This is Rin. She swings down from the Obito's wagon in a quick moment of movement, her feet absently recapturing the tempo of travel as they meet the path. She feels Kakashi fall farther back, taking rear-guard again now that she isn't preoccupied by temperatures and low chakra levels and weak flesh. It has been three days, and Obito still has not woken up. She thinks he is almost out of the woods infection-wise but not completely, and the faint flush of his otherwise pale face is worrying. She - she wants so very much to just be able to shove her own vitality into the envelope of his body.

Obito's is not the worst injury Rin has ever treated, volunteering at the hospital as she does. She has seen gut wounds turned septic, glass particles in lungs, amputated arms - but this endless, useless pressure in her hands, this rigidity of her facial muscles, only came with the restless, awful stillness of Obito's unconcscious body.

A shake of the head and she is aware again, berating herself for falling into thought. She should be on her guard - on Obito's guard. This is a duty: even if she can't breathe health into Obito's body, she can be the line that no enemy will cross. She empties her mind and breathes _one two three four_ to the rhythm of a heartbeat at rest.

_Crack_ from the head of the caravan - from Sensei, and adrenalin surges in her bloodstream half of a second before she consciously identifies the sound to be that of a broken neck. She instantly casts a genjutsu and fades against the halted wagon, pulling her blowpipe out of her apron with trembling hands even as she does so.

(The blowpipe was a childish toy. She once used it in spitball wars with some of the boys in her class - won a contest against Tudoh Jin and got to make him declare his favorite color to be pink. With her hitai-ite came a fancy to buy darts for it. They have remained untouched in her pouch until two days ago, when she went scouting ahead and knew in her bones the extent of her team's vulnerability. With the polished wood rolling between her index finger and thumb, she realized that no part of her childhood is less than a resource, that no part of her childhood is sacrosanct in the face of potential death.)

Taijutsu may not be her strong suit, but there are so many different aspects of her livelihood. She is a healer-in-training, a killer-in-training, and the first will never stop her from the latter. She closes her eyes - just a blink, really - and she is stolid, she is calm, she is breathing, she is exhaling a deadly piece of metal at a flicker of red twenty feet away.

It tumbles to the ground, caught in the temple. The red is a hair-ribbon, Rin notices, and then she notices the woman's head move slightly. Three more darts are blown before Rin even registers what her hands and lungs are doing, and the movement is extinct now. Blood trickles from the woman's ruptured carotid artery, as red as her hair ribbon.

Rin breathes.

* * *

And this is the Yellow Flash. This is a man who is only a man, a man who is running blood-slick fingers absently through his bangs as his gaze flits from dead Sand-nin to dead Sand-nin to dead Sand-nin. None of the lifeless faces belong to his students, and he exhales a short burst of air, turning to the caravan to check on Obito and just catching sight of Rin climbing into the wagon. He hasn't seen Kakashi since the start of the skirmish, but that isn't saying much - Kakashi has stayed in the rear-guard since the last ambush, and Minato has stayed on point, and these two positions are somewhat mutually exclusive in terms of meaningful interaction.

He needs to stop this uselessness. He knows it - this lack between them is causeless, is inexplicable, is driving him to the depths of speechless frustration. _Tonight,_ he decides, impulse finally reaching the next neuron - a decision finally made. He doesn't know why Kakashi is still avoiding him, but after their brief armistice the situation is even more intolerable than usual. Minato lets out a huff, willing personal matters to disperse with the used air, and taps his knuckles on the rough grain of the wagon before sticking his head in. Rin glances up at him sharply, not his student in this second but the woman she will be - the jarring prescience fades as she looks back down at her patient and mutters an absent, "Sensei."

He knows - he knows what these kids will be, who they will be, and for a split moment he is so overcome by possibility that his lungs feel tight. But: exhale like always and - "Rin, how's he doing?"

She presses her lips together. It is her most common tell, he has noticed, and he knows the answer before she says, "Same as an hour ago, and an hour before that. No worse, no better."

Minato doesn't need to tell her encouraging, useless words. Rin, though a girl, rarely requires emotional coddling. While Obito is an insecure attention-whore of the best sort and Kakashi an introverted black hole of supposed apathy, Rin's mental balance is unusally healthy for a kunoichi, something he has been given cause to be grateful for on several occasions. So he doesn't tell her _At least he's no worse,_ and she doesn't glare at him or burst into tears or try to stab him.

Instead he says, "Good work guarding him," and watches a slight, proud smile relax her mouth for a few seconds. He smiles in return and finds himself asking absently, "Did you see where Kakashi ran off to?"

"I haven't seen him since before, and I didn't catch sight of him during. There are a few bodies on the other side of the wagon, though," she says, jerking her head dismissively, her crush on the Hatake deprioritized for the time being.

Minato takes the dismissal for what it is. Walking around the wagon, he is almost immediately halted by a blood-covered corpse whose neck is at an impossible angle. He shakes his head, mouth curling fondly, and steps around. Another corpse, a nin foolish enough to go without a shirt while evidently lacking the strength for such a statement, lies roughly twenty feet away with a kunai lodged in the base of his neck.

It takes Minato a minute to find the third body, on the edge of the treeline as it is. Dark red blood has soaked the loam around the Sand-nin - but Minato hears a faint gurgling and instantly has hand in the nin's hair, a kunai to the nin's bared throat. There is a moan of agony, a choked "_please_", and Minato realizes that his knee in the small of the Sand-nin's back is grinding what is apparently a gut-wound into the dirt. He considers interrogation for an infinite second, but there is really no point. He lets the kunai move in his hand, gives death more easily than he could cut a piece of pie, and stands straight again before changing his mind and bending to roll the fresh corpse onto its back. The gaping belly wound is a messy swipe, angled - nothing like Kakashi's usual deliberate precision.

Minato feels his bones lock and pushes down the instinctive panic, suddenly wishing he hadn't killed Gut-Wound so quickly after all. Standing, he looks at the scene around him with different eyes. He strides towards the caravan, mouth calling numbly for Rin even as he searches for some misplaced detail, some clue of where his student has disappeared to -

Rin is at his side, mouth moving and eyes earnest, and he thinks he may be replying - he mentally slaps himself, hears himself saying, " - Check the woods, no more than fifty feet in - " but Rin is staring at the first corpse, her brows bending. Broken neck, multiple contusions - but _why so much blood_, and just like that Minato is on his knees, is crawling under the wagon, is dragging out the limp body of Hatake Kakashi.

There is a roaring in his ears as his fingers scrabble at Kakashi's uniform, at the sodden mass of his student's shirt, at the stab wound in Kakashi's lower back. Rin slaps his hands away, green glow immediate even as she shoves a blood replenishing pill into the lax mouth - "Make him swallow!" - and this is his life, this is his life, this is his life.

This is his twenty-first birthday.

* * *

**A/N:** So things are about to start moving along. Huzzah!


End file.
